progressive era presidents essay

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Course: US history   >   Unit 7

• Introduction to the age of empire
• The age of empire
• The Spanish-American War
• Imperialism
• The Progressives

The Progressive Era

• The presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
• Progressivism
• The period of US history from the 1890s to the 1920s is usually referred to as the Progressive Era , an era of intense social and political reform aimed at making progress toward a better society.
• Progressive Era reformers sought to harness the power of the federal government to eliminate unethical and unfair business practices, reduce corruption, and counteract the negative social effects of industrialization.
• During the Progressive Era, protections for workers and consumers were strengthened, and women finally achieved the right to vote.

The problems of industrialization

The ideology and politics of progressivism, the dark side of progressivism, what do you think.

• For more, see H.W. Brands, The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s (Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
• For more on the Progressive movement, see Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
• For more on Progressive ideology, see Shelton Stromquist, Reinventing “The People”: The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
• See Walter Nugent, Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
• For more on Wilson’s racial policies, see Eric S. Yellin, Racism in the Nation’s Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
• Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002), 3-4.
• For more on eugenics in the United States, see Paul A. Lombardo, A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).

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Brewminate: A Bold Blend of News and Ideas

The Progressive Presidents: Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson

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The ownership of corporations and the relationship between owners and laborers were the contentious topics of the period.

Roosevelt’s Square Deal

At the dawn of the twentieth century, America was at a crossroads. Presented with abundant opportunity, but also hindered by significant internal and external problems, the country was seeking leaders who could provide a new direction. The political climate was ripe for reform, and the stage was set for the era of the Progressive Presidents, beginning with Republican Theodore Roosevelt.

Teddy Roosevelt was widely popular due to his status as a hero of the Spanish-American War and his belief in “speaking softly and carrying a big stick.” Taking over the presidency in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley, he quickly assured America that he would not take any drastic measures. He then demanded a “Square Deal” that would address his primary concerns for the era—the three C’s: control of corporations, consumer protection, and conservation.

The ownership of corporations and the relationship between owners and laborers, as well as government’s role in the relationship, were the contentious topics of the period. Workers were demanding greater rights and protection, while corporations expected labor to remain cheap and plentiful. This conflict came to a head in 1902, with the anthracite coal strike in Pennsylvania. Coal mining was dirty and dangerous work, and 140,000 miners went on strike and demanded a 20 percent pay increase and a reduction in the workday from ten to nine hours. The mine owners were unsympathetic and refused to negotiate with labor representatives. With the approach of winter the dwindling coal supply began to cause concern throughout the nation.

Roosevelt, going against established precedent, decided to step in. He summoned the mine owners and union representatives to meet with him in Washington. Roosevelt was partly moved by strong public support and took the side of the miners. Still, the mine owners were reluctant to negotiate until Roosevelt, threatening to use his “big stick,” declared that he would seize the mines and operate them with federal troops. Owners reluctantly agreed to arbitration, where the striking workers received a 10 percent pay increase and a nine-hour working day. This was the first time a president sided with unions in a labor dispute, and it helped cement Roosevelt’s reputation as a friend of the common people and gave his administration the nickname “The Square Deal.”

Emboldened by this success and in pursuit of the first element of his Square Deal, Roosevelt began to attack large, monopolistic corporations. Some trusts were effective and legitimate, but many of these companies engaged in corrupt and preferential business practices. In 1902, the Northern Securities Company, owned by J.P. Morgan and James J. Hill, controlled most of the railroads in the northwestern United States and intended to create a total monopoly. Roosevelt initiated legal proceedings against Northern Securities and eventually the Supreme Court ordered that the company be dissolved. Roosevelt’s radical actions angered big business and earned him the reputation of a “trust buster,” despite the fact that his successors Taft and Wilson actually dissolved more trusts.

In 1903, with urging from Roosevelt, Congress created the Department of Commerce and Labor (DOCL). This cabinet-level department was designed to monitor corporations and ensure that they engaged in fair business practices. The Bureau of Corporations was created under the DOCL to benefit consumers by monitoring interstate commerce, helping dissolve monopolies, and promoting fair competition between companies. In 1913, the DOCL was split into two separate entities, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor, both of which continue to play an important role in regulating business today.

The railroad business continued to be one of the most powerful and influential industries. Like many companies of the time, railroad companies engaged in corrupt business practices such as rebating and price fixing. Roosevelt encouraged Congress to take action to address these abuses, and in 1903 they passed the Elkins Act, which levied heavy fines on companies that engaged in illegal rebating. In 1906, they passed the Hepburn Act, which greatly strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission. This law allowed the Commission to set maximum rates, inspect a company’s books, and investigate railroads, sleeping car companies, oil pipelines, and other transportation firms. This was a bold action by Roosevelt and Congress given the transportation industry was a powerful lobbyist and a significant political contributor.

The second element of Roosevelt’s Square Deal was consumer protection. In the early 1900s, there was little regulation of the food or drugs that were available to the public. In 1906, Upton Sinclair published a book called The Jungle that described in graphic detail the Chicago slaughterhouse industry. Sinclair intended for his book to expose the plight of immigrant workers and possibly bring readers to the Socialist movement, but people were instead shocked and sickened by the practices of the meat industry.

Roosevelt had the power to do something about the horrors described in The Jungle . He immediately appointed a special investigating committee to look into food handling practices in Chicago. Their report confirmed much of what Sinclair had written. Roosevelt was shocked by the report and predicted that it could have a devastating effect on American meat exports. He agreed to keep it quiet on the condition that Congress would take action to address the issues.

After much pressure from Roosevelt, Congress reluctantly agreed to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Many members of Congress were reluctant to pass these laws, as the meat industry was a powerful lobbying force. However, the passage of this legislation helped prevent the adulteration and mislabeling of food, alcohol, and drugs. It was an important first step toward ensuring that Americans were buying safe and healthy products. Eventually, the meatpacking industry welcomed these reforms, as they found that a government seal of approval would help increase their export revenues.

The final element of Roosevelt’s Square Deal was conservation. Roosevelt was widely known as a sportsman, hunter, and outdoorsman, and he had a genuine love and respect for nature. However, many Americans of the time viewed the country’s natural resources as limitless. For example, many farmers, ranchers, and timber companies in the west were consuming a huge portion of the available resources at an alarming rate. Their primary obsession was profit, and they had little concern for the damage they were causing. However, there was a small but vocal population who had a great deal of concern for the environment. Fortunately for them and for future Americans, the environmentalists had a friend in Teddy Roosevelt.

Environmentalism and conservation were not new ideas, but most had not been concerned with ecological issues. While a number of laws had been passed to prevent or limit the destruction of natural resources, the majority of this legislation was not enforced or lacked the teeth necessary to make a significant difference.

With Roosevelt’s urging, Congress passed the Newlands Act of 1902. This legislation allowed the federal government to sell public lands in the arid, desert western states and devote the proceeds to irrigation projects. Landowners would then repay part of the irrigation costs from the proceeds they received from their newly fertile land, and this money was earmarked for more irrigation projects. Eventually, dozens of dams were created in the desert including the massive Roosevelt Dam on Arizona’s Salt River.

Another major concern of environmentalists was the devastation of the nation’s timberlands. By 1900, only about 25 percent of the huge timber preserves were still standing. Roosevelt set aside 125 million acres of timberlands as federal reserves, over three times the amount preserved by all of his predecessors combined. He also performed similar actions with coal and water reserves, thus guaranteeing the preservation of some natural resources for future generations. Environmentalists such as John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the upstart Sierra Club aided Roosevelt in his efforts. Preserving America’s natural resources and calling attention to the desperate need for conservation may well have been Teddy Roosevelt’s greatest achievement as President, and his most enduring legacy.

Taft’s Administration

In 1908, President Teddy Roosevelt could have easily carried his burgeoning popularity to a sweeping victory in the presidential election, but in 1904 he made an impulsive promise not to seek a second elected term. However, he did not intend to completely relinquish control, so he handpicked a successor. Howard Taft, the 350-pound Secretary of War, was chosen as the Republican candidate for 1908. Taft was a mild progressive and an easygoing man that Roosevelt and other Republican leaders felt they could control. Taft easily defeated the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, and the Socialist candidate, Eugene Debs, in what can be construed as continued public endorsement of Roosevelt.

Unfortunately, from the onset of his administration Taft did not live up to Roosevelt’s standards or the expectations of other Progressives. He lacked Roosevelt’s strength of personality and was more passive in his dealings with Congress. Many politicians were surprised to learn that Taft did not share some of the Progressive ideas and policies that Roosevelt endorsed. In fact, many people felt that Taft lacked the mental and physical stamina necessary to be an effective President.

The first major blow to the Progressives during Taft’s administration was the Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909. Taft called a special session of Congress to address what many people felt were excessive tariffs. After this session, the House of Representatives passed a bill that moderately restricted tariffs, but their legislation was severely modified when it reached the Senate. Radical Senators, led by Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, tacked on hundreds of revisions that effectively raised tariffs on almost all products. Taft eventually signed the bill and declared it “the best bill that the Republican Party ever passed.” This action dumbfounded Progressives and marked the beginning of an internal struggle for control of the Republican Party.

Another issue that caused dissension among Republicans was Taft’s handling of conservation issues. Taft was a dedicated conservationist and he devoted extensive resources to the protection of the environment. However, most of his progress was undone by his handling of the Ballinger-Pinchot dispute. Pinchot, the leader of the Department of Forestry and a well-liked ally of Roosevelt, attacked Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger for how he handled public lands.

Ballinger opened up thousands of acres of public lands in Wyoming, Montana, and Alaska for private use, and this angered many Progressives. Pinchot was openly critical of Ballinger, and in 1910 Taft responded by firing Pinchot for insubordination. This infuriated much of the public as well as the legions of political players who were still fiercely loyal to Roosevelt.

A major rift occurred in the Republican Party as a result of Taft’s straying from Progressive policy. The party was split down the middle between the “Old Guard” Republicans who supported Taft and the Progressive Republicans who backed Roosevelt. This division in the Republican Party allowed Democrats to regain control of the House of Representatives in a landslide victory in the congressional elections of 1910.

In early 1912, Roosevelt triumphantly returned and announced himself as a challenger for the Republican presidential nomination. Roosevelt and his followers, embracing “New Nationalism,” began to furiously campaign for the nomination. However, as a result of their late start and Taft’s ability as incumbent to control the convention, they were unable to secure the delegates necessary to win the Republican candidacy. Not one to admit defeat, Roosevelt formed the “Bull Moose” Party and vowed to enter the race as a third-party candidate.

The split in the Republican Party made the Democrats optimistic about regaining the White House for the first time since 1897. They sought a reformist candidate to challenge the Republicans, and decided on Woodrow Wilson, a career academic and the current progressive governor of New Jersey. Wilson’s “New Freedom” platform sought reduced tariffs, banking reform, and stronger antitrust legislation. The Socialists again nominated Eugene V. Debs whose platform sought public ownership of resources and industries. As expected, Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican vote, and Wilson easily won a majority of the electoral votes. Having received only 41 percent of the popular vote, Wilson was a minority president.

Wilson’s New Freedom

Upon taking office, Woodrow Wilson became only the second Democratic president since 1861. Wilson was a trim figure with clean-cut features and pince-nez glasses clipped to the bridge of his nose, giving him an academic look. Partly due to his academic background and limited political experience, Wilson was very much an idealist. He was intelligent and calculating, but the public perception was that he was emotionally cold and distant. Wilson arrived in the White House with a clear agenda and the drive to achieve all of his goals. In addition, the Democratic majority in both houses of Congress was eager to show the public that their support was not misdirected.

Wilson’s platform called for an assault on “the triple wall of privilege,” which consisted of tariffs, banks, and trusts, and rarely has a president set to work so quickly. His first objective was to reduce the prohibitive tariffs that hurt American businesses and consumers. In an unprecedented move, Wilson personally appeared before Congress to call a special session to discuss tariffs in early 1913. Moved and stunned by Wilson’s eloquence and force of character, Congress immediately designed the Underwood Tariff Bill, which significantly reduced import fees.

The Underwood Tariff Bill brought the first significant reduction of duties since before the Civil War. In order to make up for the loss in revenues caused by the lower tariffs, the Underwood Bill introduced a graduated income tax. This new tax was introduced under the authority of the recently ratified Sixteenth Amendment. Initially, the tax was levied on incomes over $3,000, which was significantly higher than the national average. However, by 1917 the revenue from income taxes greatly exceeded receipts from the tariff. This margin has continued to grow exponentially over the years.

After tackling the tariff, Wilson turned his attention to the nation’s banks. The country’s financial structure was woefully outdated, and its inefficiencies had been exposed by the Republican’s economic expansion and the Panic of 1907. The currency system was very inelastic, with most reserves concentrated in New York and a few other large cities. These resources could not be mobilized quickly in the event of a financial crisis in a different area. Wilson considered two proposals: one calling for a third Bank of the United States, the other seeking a decentralized bank under government control.

Siding with public opinion, Wilson called another special session of Congress in June of 1913. He overwhelmingly endorsed the idea of a decentralized bank, and asked Congress to radically change the banking system. Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, which was arguably the greatest piece of legislation between the Civil War and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Act created a Federal Reserve Board, which oversaw a system of 12 regional reserve districts, each with its own central bank. This new system also issued Federal Reserve Notes, paper currency that quickly allowed the government to adjust the flow of money, which are still in use today. The Federal Reserve Act was instrumental in allowing America to meet the financial challenges of World War I and emerge from the war as one of the world’s financial powers.

Emboldened by his successes, President Wilson turned his attention to the trusts. Although legislation designed to address the issue of trusts had existed for many years, they were still very much a problem. Again, Wilson appeared before Congress and delivered an emotional and dramatic address. He asked Congress to create legislation that would finally address trusts and tame the rampant monopolies. After several months of discussion, Congress presented Wilson with the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. This act allowed the government to closely inspect companies engaged in interstate commerce, such as meatpackers and railroads. The Commission investigated unfair trading practices such as false advertising, monopolistic practices, bribery, and misrepresentation.

Following closely behind the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, was the Clayton Act of 1914. It served to strengthen the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 (the first measure passed by the U.S. Congress to prohibit trusts) and redefine the practices that were considered monopolistic and illegal. The Clayton Act provided support for labor unions by exempting labor from antitrust prosecution and legalizing strikes and peaceful picketing, which were not part of the Sherman Act. Renowned American Federation of Labor union leader, Samuel Gompers, declared the Clayton Act the “Magna Carta” of labor. Unfortunately, labor’s triumph was short-lived, as conservative judges continued to curtail union power in controversial decisions.

The era of the Progressive presidents produced a number of notable achievements. Trust-busting forced industrialists and monopolistic corporations to consider public opinion when making business decisions. This benefited the consumer and helped grow the economy. The Progressive presidents also increased consumers’ rights by limiting corporate abuses and trying to ensure the safe labeling of food and drugs. The creation of a federal income tax system lowered tariffs and increased America’s presence as a global trading partner. It also raised additional revenues, some of which were used for beneficial programs such as conservation. The Progressive presidents served to strengthen the office of the president and the public began to expect more from the executive branch. Progressivism as a concept helped challenge traditional thinking about government’s relationship to the people and sparked new ideas that stimulated thought for decades to come.

Along with these significant accomplishments, the Progressive movement also had a number of notable shortcomings. Due to several contrary schools of thought within the movement, goals were often confusing and contradictory. Although most Progressives had good intentions, their conflicting goals helped detract from the overall objectives of the movement. Despite the numerous successes and lofty goals and ideals of the Progressive movement, the federal government was still too greatly influenced by industry and big business. The Progressive movement was not a complete success, but it did serve to spark new ideas and new ways of thinking about business and government. It created a new school of thought that challenged traditional ideas and allowed several new politicians to break the mold and lead the country in a new direction. This new way of thinking proved vital for the United States as the First World War loomed on the horizon.

Originally published by AP Study Notes , republished with permission for educational, non-commercial purposes.

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Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era

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The name Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt conjures up many images: from hunter to teddy bear, from trust-buster to champion of capitalism, from Republican president to Bull Moose challenger. TR remains controversial, contradictory, and above all, larger than life. His larger-than-life image was matched by his actual life as he took on the roles of cattle rancher, author, urban reformer, environmentalist, police commissioner, governor, and president.

The era in which he lived, between the Civil War and World War I, was a transformational time in America, encompassing major cultural, economic, and political changes, and Roosevelt oversaw a balancing act of reform and regulation while accommodating the creation of the modern industrial society of the twentieth century. Learn more about TR and his times through essays, primary sources, videos, lesson plans, and timelines created by the Gilder Lehrman Institute.

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Timeline: The Era of Theodore Roosevelt

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Progressive presidents: roosevelt, taft, and wilson, introduction.

The Progressive Era in American history, spanning roughly from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, was a period of significant social, political, and economic change. During this transformative time, a group of presidents emerged, each leaving an indelible mark on the nation’s history and paving the way for a more progressive America.

In this 3,000-word essay, we will delve into the roles and contributions of three influential leaders of this era: Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. Each of these leaders brought their unique vision and policies to the forefront, shaping the course of the Progressive movement and the nation as a whole.

Theodore Roosevelt: The Trustbuster

As we explore the Progressive Era, we must first turn our attention to Theodore Roosevelt, a larger-than-life figure who ascended to the presidency in the wake of President William McKinley’s assassination in 1901. Roosevelt’s ascent to the highest office in the land marked a turning point in American politics.

Roosevelt, known for his boundless energy and strong-willed persona, embarked on a mission to confront the immense power held by corporate trusts and monopolies. His approach, often described as “trust-busting,” aimed to break the stranglehold that these monopolistic entities had on various industries.

During his presidency, Roosevelt championed antitrust legislation such as the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Hepburn Act, which aimed to curb the excessive influence of big business and promote fair competition. He was not afraid to take on corporate giants like Standard Oil and Northern Securities, earning him the nickname “Trustbuster-in-Chief.”

However, Roosevelt’s legacy extended beyond trust-busting. He was also a fervent advocate for conservation and environmental protection. Through initiatives like the establishment of national parks and monuments, he laid the groundwork for the modern environmental movement.

As we delve deeper into the Progressive era, we will examine Theodore Roosevelt’s policies, his impact on the Progressive movement, and the enduring legacy he left on the American political landscape.

William Howard Taft: The Era of Dollar Diplomacy

William Howard Taft, who succeeded Theodore Roosevelt as the 27th President of the United States in 1909, faced the formidable task of following in the footsteps of his dynamic predecessor. Taft’s presidency marked a continuation of the Progressive movement, albeit with a distinct emphasis on foreign policy and economic interests.

One of Taft’s notable policies was his approach to foreign affairs, famously known as “Dollar Diplomacy.” This foreign policy doctrine aimed to promote American economic interests abroad by using diplomatic means to support American businesses in foreign markets. In essence, it sought to replace “bullets with dollars” as a means of exerting influence.

Under Dollar Diplomacy, Taft’s administration encouraged American businesses to invest in Latin American and East Asian countries, particularly in industries such as infrastructure, mining, and banking. The idea was to strengthen economic ties with these nations and, in doing so, promote political stability and American influence in regions historically prone to instability.

While Dollar Diplomacy had its proponents who saw it as a pragmatic approach to international relations, it also faced criticism. Some argued that it amounted to economic imperialism , as it often prioritized the interests of American corporations over the sovereignty of foreign nations. Taft’s approach drew controversy and tensions in various parts of the world, including in countries like Nicaragua and China.

Despite the challenges and criticisms, William Howard Taft made significant contributions to the Progressive agenda. His administration continued to enforce antitrust laws, and he advocated for safety regulations in the workplace, a move aimed at protecting the rights and well-being of American workers.

As we delve deeper into Taft’s presidency, we will analyze the complexities of Dollar Diplomacy, the domestic policies of his administration, and his place in the broader context of the Progressive Era.

Woodrow Wilson: The Progressive Reformer

Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, assumed office in 1913 with a vision of reform and a commitment to advancing the principles of the Progressive movement. His presidency marked a distinct phase in the evolution of progressivism, characterized by his “New Freedom” agenda and his transformative impact on domestic and foreign policy.

Wilson’s background as a former governor of New Jersey and a scholar of political science provided him with a unique perspective on governance. He believed in restoring economic competition and fairness, and he sought to break up monopolistic corporations, much like Roosevelt and Taft before him.

The centerpiece of Wilson’s domestic agenda was the implementation of the “New Freedom” platform, which aimed to promote small businesses, reduce the power of big corporations, and enhance individual economic liberty. Key legislative achievements during his presidency included the Federal Reserve Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, which aimed to regulate banks and curb anticompetitive practices, respectively.

Furthermore, Wilson’s commitment to social and labor reforms resulted in the establishment of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to monitor business practices and protect consumers. His presidency also saw the introduction of labor reforms, such as the Adamson Act, which established an eight-hour workday for railroad workers.

Woodrow Wilson’s progressive ideals extended to foreign policy as well. He advocated for a foreign policy based on moral principles and self-determination. Although initially reelected in 1916 with the campaign slogan “He Kept Us Out of War” regarding World War I, Wilson eventually led the United States into the conflict, believing it was a war to make the world “safe for democracy.”

As we examine Woodrow Wilson’s presidency in greater detail, we will delve into his domestic and foreign policies, the impact of the New Freedom agenda, and the legacy he left on the Progressive movement and the world stage.

Comparing the Progressive Presidents

As we explore the Progressive Era through the lenses of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson, it becomes evident that each of these leaders made significant contributions to the Progressive movement, albeit with distinctive approaches and priorities. Comparing and contrasting their presidencies offers valuable insights into the diversity of progressive ideals and actions during this transformative period.

While all three presidents shared a commitment to addressing the excesses of big business and promoting fairness, they differed in their strategies. Roosevelt, often hailed as the “Trustbuster-in-Chief,” focused on antitrust legislation and conservation, aiming to tame corporate giants and protect natural resources. Taft, on the other hand, introduced the concept of “Dollar Diplomacy,” prioritizing economic interests in foreign policy. Wilson, with his New Freedom agenda, emphasized the importance of individual economic liberty and pushed for comprehensive domestic reforms.

Moreover, their foreign policies diverged significantly. Roosevelt was known for his active involvement in international affairs, exemplified by his mediation efforts in the Russo-Japanese War and his pursuit of a “big stick” diplomacy. Taft, through Dollar Diplomacy, aimed to exert American influence through economic means. Wilson, in contrast, initially focused on neutrality in international conflicts but eventually led the United States into World War I with a vision of promoting global democracy.

Despite these differences, there were also commonalities among the Progressive Presidents. All three recognized the need to address the challenges posed by monopolistic corporations, and each contributed to antitrust legislation in their own way. They shared a commitment to improving the lives of ordinary Americans through labor and social reforms, reflecting the broader ethos of progressivism.

Comparing these presidents allows us to appreciate the multifaceted nature of the Progressive movement and its evolving priorities. It highlights the complexities of leadership during a period of rapid change and the enduring impact of their policies on American society.

Legacy of the Progressive Presidents

The legacies of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson continue to shape American society and politics to this day. Collectively, they left an indelible mark on the Progressive movement and the nation as a whole.

Roosevelt’s legacy is perhaps most evident in the realm of conservation and environmental protection. His establishment of national parks and monuments laid the foundation for modern environmentalism. Additionally, his trust-busting policies paved the way for greater government regulation of business practices, a trend that would persist in the decades to come.

Taft’s legacy is closely tied to the concept of Dollar Diplomacy, which, although controversial, marked a shift in how the United States engaged with the world economically. It set a precedent for American economic involvement abroad, influencing future foreign policy decisions.

Woodrow Wilson’s legacy is notable for the enduring principles of his New Freedom agenda, including the creation of the Federal Reserve System and the protection of consumers through the FTC. His vision of self-determination and global democracy also played a pivotal role in shaping the nation’s role on the international stage.

Furthermore, the Progressive Presidents left a lasting impact on the trajectory of American politics. Their commitment to addressing economic inequality, regulating corporate power, and improving the lives of ordinary citizens set a precedent for future generations of leaders and progressive movements. The foundations they laid in areas such as antitrust legislation, environmental conservation, and labor rights continue to influence policy discussions and reforms in the 21st century.

Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson, as the Progressive Presidents of their time, navigated the complexities of a rapidly changing America. Each brought their unique approach to addressing the challenges of the era, leaving behind a legacy that continues to shape the nation’s politics and policies.

Roosevelt’s trust-busting efforts and conservation initiatives, Taft’s Dollar Diplomacy, and Wilson’s New Freedom agenda all played pivotal roles in advancing the ideals of the Progressive movement. While their methods and priorities differed, their collective impact on American society, both domestically and in the realm of foreign affairs, was profound.

As we reflect on the Progressive Era and the contributions of these Presidents, we must recognize that their legacy extends far beyond their time in office. Their commitment to social justice, economic fairness, and the well-being of the American people continue to inspire leaders and movements seeking to build a more equitable and progressive future for the United States.

Their stories remind us of the enduring power of leadership and the potential for positive change in even the most challenging of times. The Progressive Presidents of the early 20th century have left an enduring mark on American history, one that serves as a testament to the enduring spirit of progress and reform.

Class Notes – Theodore Roosevelt – Progressive President

The actions of the muckrakers and a newly active middle class were heard by the then Vice President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. When the President, a very conservative William McKinley was assassinated, Roosevelt became President. Roosevelt was the son of a wealthy old money family. He was involved in government from when he was very young. It was his belief that the wealthy had an obligation to serve. This led him to government service. He became the Assistant Secretary of War, left to form the Rough Riders and took them to Cuba where he fought in the famous battle of San Juan Hill during the taking of Cuba in the Spanish American War .

I. Theodore Roosevelt – Progressive

A. The “ Square Deal ” – Reforms – Increase in Federal Power, ended Laissez Faire. ( Result of Roosevelt’s belief in “Noblesse Oblige.” ) “Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and commonsense.”… “We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.””The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.” –New York State Fair, Syracuse September 7, 1903

1. Sherman Anti trust Act (Felt trusts should be judged on actions)

2. Mediated Coal Strike

3. Elkins Act (1903)

-Made it illegal for railroads and shippers to offer rate rebates. Railroad had to set rates. They couldn’t change w/out notice.

4. Hepburn Act (1906)

-Gave ICC the power to set maximum railroad rates.

5. Pure Food and Drug Act – Passed in 1906 and amended in 1911 to include a prohibition on misleading labeling.

6. Meat Inspection Act (1906)

7. Conservation

-Strengthening of Forest Bureau and created National Forest Service. -Creation of much national park land. -Appointment of Gifford Pinchot, professional conservationist to be in charge of national forests.

B. Roosevelt and William Howard Taft

1. Roosevelt did not run for a third term. 2. He was only in his mid fifties. 3. Stayed involved in politics. 4. Became dissatisfied with Taft and ran for a third term with a third party, the Progressive Party, which was later nicknamed the “Bull Moose Party.” Bull Moose Party–Nickname for the Progressive Party of 1912. The bull moose was the emblem for the party, based on Roosevelt’s boasting that he was “as strong as a bull moose.”

C. Election of 1912

1. Roosevelt runs for the Progressive Party a.k.a. The Bull Moose Party. 2. Republicans split and the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson won

Woodrow Wilson – Progressive President

When Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat won the election of 1912 he received only 42% of the vote. The Progressive candidates; Roosevelt, Taft and Debs totaled 58% of the vote. Clearly America still sought progressive change. Wilson, an educator and the son of a Presbyterian Minister, recognized this and embarked on a program to continue Progressive reform called the “New Freedom.”

I. Woodrow Wilson – The “ New Freedom ” reforms

A. Underwood Tariff of 1913 -First lowering of tariffs since the Civil War -Went against the protectionist lobby

B. Federal Trade Act (1914)

-Set up FTC or Federal Trade Commission to investigate and halt unfair and illegal business practices. The FTC could put a halt to these illegal business practices by issuing what is known as a “cease and desist order.”

C. Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)

-Declared certain businesses illegal (interlocking directorates, trusts, horizontal mergers) -Unions and the Grange were not subject to antitrust laws. This made unions legal! -Strikes, boycotts, picketing and the collection of strike benefit funds ruled legal

C. Creation of Federal Reserve System (1914)

– Federal Reserve Banks in 12 districts would print and coin money as well as set interest rates. In this way the “Fed,” as it was called, could control the money supply and effect the value of currency. The more money in circulation the lower the value and inflation went up. The less money in circulation the greater the value and this would lower inflation.

D. Federal Farm Loan Act set up Farm Loan Banks to support farmers.

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Progressives and progressivism in an era of reform.

• Maureen A. Flanagan Maureen A. Flanagan Department of Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.84
• Published online: 05 August 2016

The decades from the 1890s into the 1920s produced reform movements in the United States that resulted in significant changes to the country’s social, political, cultural, and economic institutions. The impulse for reform emanated from a pervasive sense that the country’s democratic promise was failing. Political corruption seemed endemic at all levels of government. An unregulated capitalist industrial economy exploited workers and threatened to create a serious class divide, especially as the legal system protected the rights of business over labor. Mass urbanization was shifting the country from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrial one characterized by poverty, disease, crime, and cultural clash. Rapid technological advancements brought new, and often frightening, changes into daily life that left many people feeling that they had little control over their lives. Movements for socialism, woman suffrage, and rights for African Americans, immigrants, and workers belied the rhetoric of the United States as a just and equal democratic society for all its members.

Responding to the challenges presented by these problems, and fearful that without substantial change the country might experience class upheaval, groups of Americans proposed undertaking significant reforms. Underlying all proposed reforms was a desire to bring more justice and equality into a society that seemed increasingly to lack these ideals. Yet there was no agreement among these groups about the exact threat that confronted the nation, the means to resolve problems, or how to implement reforms. Despite this lack of agreement, all so-called Progressive reformers were modernizers. They sought to make the country’s democratic promise a reality by confronting its flaws and seeking solutions. All Progressivisms were seeking a via media, a middle way between relying on older ideas of 19th-century liberal capitalism and the more radical proposals to reform society through either social democracy or socialism. Despite differences among Progressives, the types of Progressivisms put forth, and the successes and failures of Progressivism, this reform era raised into national discourse debates over the nature and meaning of democracy, how and for whom a democratic society should work, and what it meant to be a forward-looking society. It also led to the implementation of an activist state.

• Progressives
• Progressivisms
• urbanization
• immigration

The reform impulse of the decades from the 1890s into the 1920s did not erupt suddenly in the 1890s. Previous movements, such as the Mugwump faction of the Republican Party and the Knights of Labor, had challenged existing conditions in the 1870s and 1880s. Such earlier movements either tended to focus on the problems of a particular group or were too small to effect much change. The 1890s Populist Party’s concentration on agrarian issues did not easily resonate with the expanding urban population. The Populists lost their separate identity when the Democratic Party absorbed their agenda. The reform proposals of the Progressive era differed from those of these earlier protest movements. Progressives came from all strata of society. Progressivism aimed to implement comprehensive systemic reforms to change the direction of the country.

Political corruption, economic exploitation, mass migration and urbanization, rapid technological advancements, and social unrest challenged the rhetoric of the United States as a just and equal society. Now groups of Americans throughout the country proposed to reform the country’s political, social, cultural, and economic institutions in ways that they believed would address fundamental problems that had produced the inequities of American society.

Progressives did not seek to overturn capitalism. They sought to revitalize a democratic promise of justice and equality and to move the country into a modern Progressive future by eliminating or at least ameliorating capitalism’s worst excesses. They wanted to replace an individualistic, competitive society with a more cooperative, democratic one. They sought to bring a measure of social justice for all people, to eliminate political corruption, and to rebalance the relationship among business, labor, and consumers by introducing economic regulation. 1 Progressives turned to government to achieve these objectives and laid the foundation for an increasingly powerful state.

Social Justice Progressivism

Social justice Progressives wanted an activist state whose first priority was to provide for the common welfare. Jane Addams argued that real democracy must operate from a sense of social morality that would foster the greater good of all rather than protect those with wealth and power. 2 Social justice Progressivism confronted two problems to securing a democracy based on social morality. Several basic premises that currently structured the country had to be rethought, and social justice Progressivism was promoted largely by women who lacked official political power.

Legal Precedent or Social Realism

The existing legal system protected the rights of business and property over labor. 3 From 1893 , when Florence Kelley secured factory legislation mandating the eight-hour workday for women and teenagers and outlawing child labor in Illinois factories, social justice Progressives faced legal obstacles as business contested such legislation. In 1895 , the Supreme Court in Ritchie v. People ruled that such legislation violated the “freedom of contract” provision of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court confined the police power of the state to protecting immediate health and safety, not groups of people in industries. 4 Then, in the 1905 case Lochner v. New York , the Court declared that the state had no interest in regulating the hours of male bakers. To circumvent these rulings, Kelley, Josephine Goldmark, and Louis Brandeis contended that law should address social realities. The Brandeis brief to the Supreme Court in 1908 , in Muller v. Oregon , argued for upholding Oregon’s eight-hour law for women working in laundries because of the debilitating physical effects of such work. When the Court agreed, social justice Progressives hoped this would be the opening wedge to extend new rights to labor. The Muller v. Oregon ruling had a narrow gender basis. It declared that the state had an interest in protecting the reproductive capacities of women. Henceforth, male and female workers would be unequal under the law, limiting women’s economic opportunities across the decades, rather than shifting the legal landscape. Ruling on the basis of women’s reproductive capacities, the Court made women socially inferior to men in law and justified state-sponsored interference in women’s control of their bodies. 5

Role of the State to Protect and Foster

Women organized in voluntary groups worked to identify and attack the problems caused by mass urbanization. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs ( 1890 ) coordinated women’s activities throughout the country. Social justice Progressives lobbied municipal governments to enact new ordinances to ameliorate existing urban conditions of poverty, disease, and inequality. Chicago women secured the nation’s first juvenile court ( 1899 ). 6 Los Angeles women helped inaugurate a public health nursing program and secure pure milk regulations for their city. Women also secured municipal public baths in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities. Organized women in Philadelphia and Dallas were largely responsible for their cities implementing new clean water systems. Women set up pure milk stations to prevent infant diarrhea and organized infant welfare societies. 7

Social justice Progressives sought national legislation to protect consumers from the pernicious effects of industrial production outside of their immediate control. In 1905 , the General Federation of Women’s Clubs initiated a letter-writing campaign to pressure Congress to pass pure food legislation. Standard accounts of the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and pure milk ordinances generally credit male professionals with putting in place such reforms, but female social justice Progressives were instrumental in putting this issue before the country. 8

Social justice Progressives sought a ban on child labor and protections for children’s health and education. They argued that no society could progress if it allowed child labor. In 1912 they persuaded Congress to establish a federal Children’s Bureau to investigate conditions of children throughout the country. Julia Lathrop first headed the bureau, which was thenceforth dominated by women. Nonetheless, when Congress passed the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act ( 1916 ), banning interstate commerce in products made with child labor, a North Carolina man immediately sued, arguing that it deprived him of property in his son’s labor. The Supreme Court ( 1918 ) ruled the law unconstitutional because it violated state powers to regulate conditions of labor. A constitutional amendment banning child labor ( 1922 ) was attacked by manufacturers and conservative organizations protesting that it would give government power over children. Only four states ratified the amendment. 9

Woman suffrage was crucial for social justice Progressives as both a democratic right and because they believed it essential for their agenda. 10 When suffrage left elected officials uncertain about the power of women’s votes in 1921 , Congress passed the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infant Welfare bill, which provided federal funds for maternal and infant health. The American Medical Association opposed the bill as a violation of its expertise. Businessmen and political leaders protested that the federal government should not interfere in health care and objected that it would raise taxes. Congress made Sheppard-Towner a “sunset” act to run for five years, after which it would decide whether to renew it. Congress temporarily extended it but ended the funding in 1929 , even though the country’s infant mortality rate exceeded that of six other industrial countries. The hostility of the male-dominated American Medical Association and the Public Health Service to Sheppard-Towner and to its administration by the Children’s Bureau, along with attacks against the social justice network of women’s organizations as a communist conspiracy to undermine American society, doomed the legislation. 11

New Practices of Democracy

Women established settlement houses, voluntary associations, day nurseries, and community, neighborhood, and social centers as venues in which to practice participatory democracy. These venues intended to bring people together to learn about one another and their needs, to provide assistance for those needing help, and to lobby their governments to provide social goods to people. This was not reform from the bottom; middle-class women almost always led these venues. Most of these efforts were also racially exclusive, but African American women established venues of their own. In Atlanta, Lugenia Hope, who had spent time at Chicago’s Hull House, established the Atlanta Neighborhood Union in 1908 to organize the city’s African American women on a neighborhood basis. Hope urged women to investigate the problems of their neighborhoods and bring their issues to the municipal government. 12

The National Consumers’ League (NCL, 1899 ) practiced participatory democracy on the national level. Arising from earlier working women’s societies and with Florence Kelley at its head, the NCL investigated working conditions and urged women to use their consumer-purchasing power to force manufacturers to institute new standards of production. The NCL assembled and published “white lists” of those manufacturers found to be practicing good employment standards and awarded a “white label” to factories complying with such standards. The NCL’s tactics were voluntary—boycotts were against the law—and they did not convince many manufacturers to change their practices. Even so, such tactics drew more women into the social justice movement, and the NCL’s continuous efforts were rewarded in New Deal legislation. 13

A group of working women and settlement-house residents formed the National Women’s Trade Union League (NWTUL, 1903 ) and organized local affiliates to work for unionization in female-dominated manufacturing. 14 Middle-class women walked the picket lines with striking garment workers and waitresses in New York and Chicago and helped secure concessions from manufacturers. The NWTUL forced an official investigation into the causes of New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire ( 1911 ), in which almost 150 workers, mainly young women, died. Members of the NWTUL were organizers for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. Despite these participatory venues, much literature on such movements emphasizes male initiatives and fails to appreciate gender differences. The public forums movement promoted by men, such as Charles Sprague Smith and Frederic Howe, was a top-down effort in which prominent speakers addressed pressing issues of the day to teach the “rank and file” how to practice democracy. 15 In Boston, Mary Parker Follett promoted participatory democracy through neighborhood centers organized and run by residents. Chicago women’s organizations fostered neighborhood centers as spaces for residents to gather and discuss neighborhood needs. 16

Suffrage did not provide the political power women had hoped for, but female social justice Progressives occupied key offices in the New Deal administration. They helped write national anti-child labor legislation, minimum wage and maximum hour laws, aid to dependent children, and elements of the Social Security Act. Such legislation at least partially fulfilled the social justice Progressive agenda that activist government provide social goods to protect daily life against the vagaries of the capitalist marketplace.

Political Progressivism

Political Progressivism was a structural-instrumental approach to reform the mechanisms and exercise of politics to break the hold of political parties. Its adherents sought a well-ordered government run by experts to undercut a political patronage system that favored trading votes for services. Political Progressives believed that such reforms would enhance democracy.

Mechanisms and Processes of Electoral Democracy

The Wisconsin Idea promoted by the state’s three-time governor Robert La Follette exemplified the political Progressives’ approach to reform. The plan advocated state-level reforms to electoral procedures. A key proposal of the Wisconsin Idea was to replace the existing party control of all nominations with a popular direct primary. Wisconsin became the first state to require the direct primary. The plan also proposed giving voters the power to initiate legislation, hold referenda on proposed legislation, and recall elected officials. Wisconsin voters adopted these proposals by 1911 , 17 although Oregon was the first state to adopt the initiative and referendum, in 1902 . 18

The political Progressives attacked a patronage politics that filled administrative offices with faithful party supporters, awarded service franchises to private business, and solicited bribes in return for contracts. Political Progressives proposed shifting to merit-based government by experts provided by theoretically nonpartisan appointed commissions or city managers systems that would apply businesslike expertise and fiscal efficiency to government. They proposed replacing city councils elected by districts (wards) with citywide at-large elections, creating strong mayor systems to undercut the machinations of city councils, and reducing the number of elective offices. They also sought new municipal charters and home-rule powers to give cities more control over their governing authority and taxing power. 19

Political Progressives were mainly men organized into new local civic federations, city clubs, municipal reform leagues, and municipal research bureaus and into new national groups such as the National Municipal League. They attended national conferences such as the National Conference on City Planning, discussing topics of concern to political Progressives. The National Municipal League formulated a model charter to reorganize municipal government predicated on home rule and argued that its proposals would provide good tools for democracy. 20

In general, only small cities such as Galveston, Texas, and Des Moines, Iowa, or new cities such as Phoenix, Arizona, where such political Progressives dominated elections, adopted the city-manager and commission governments. 21 Other cities elected reform mayors, such as Tom Johnson of Cleveland, Ohio, who placed the professional experts Frederic Howe and Edward W. Bemis into his administration. 22 Charter reform, home rule, and at-large election movements were more complicated in big cities. They failed in Chicago. 23 Boston switched to at-large elections, but the shift in mechanisms did lessen political party control. A new breed of politicians who appealed to interest group politics gained control rather than rule by experts. 24

Good Government by Experts

Focus on good government reform earned these men the rather pejorative nickname of “goo-goos.” These Progressives argued that only the technological expertise of professional engineers and professional bureaucrats could design rational and economically efficient ordinances for solving urban problems. When corporate interests challenged antipollution ordinances and increased government regulation as causing undue hardship for manufacturers, political Progressives countered with economic answers. Pollution was an economic problem: it caused the city to suffer economic waste and inefficiency, and it cost the city and its taxpayers money. 25 In Pittsburgh, the Mellon Institute Smoke Investigation marshaled scientific expertise to measure soot fall in the city and to calculate how costly smoke pollution might be to the city. 26 The Supreme Court in Northwestern Laundry v. Des Moines ( 1915 ) ruled that there were no valid constitutional objections to state power to regulate pollution. 27

The political Progressives’ cost-benefit approach to regulation clashed with the social justice idea that protecting the public health should decide pollution regulation. The Pittsburgh Ladies Health Protective Association argued that smoke pollution was a general health hazard. 28 The Chicago women’s Anti-Smoke League called smoke pollution a threat to daily life and common welfare, as coal soot fell on food and in homes and was breathed in by children. They demanded immediate strict antismoke ordinances and inspectors to vigorously inspect and enforce the ordinances. The league urged all city residents to monitor pollution in their neighborhoods. 29 The Baltimore Women’s Civic League made smoke abatement a principal target for improving living and working conditions. 30 The cost-benefit argument usually won out over the health-first one.

For political Progressives, good government also meant using professional expertise to plan city growth and reorder the urban built environment. They abandoned an earlier City Beautiful movement that focused on cultural and aesthetic beautification in favor of systematic planning by architects, engineers, and city planners to secure the economic development desired by business. 31 Daniel Burnham’s Chicago Plan ( 1909 ) was the work of a committee of men selected by the city’s Commercial Club. 32 Experts crafted new master plans to guarantee urban functionality and profitability through “creative destruction,” to build new transportation and communication networks, erect new grand civic buildings and spaces, and zone the city’s functions into distinct sectors. They proposed new street configurations to facilitate the movement of goods and people. 33 As the profession of urban planning developed, cities sought out planners such as Harland Bartholomew to formulate new master plans. 34

New York’s Mary Simkhovitch contested this approach and urged planning on the neighborhood level, with professionals consulting with the people. She stressed that no plan was good if it emphasized only economy. Simkhovitch and Florence Kelley organized the first National Conference on City Planning ( 1909 ) around the theme of planning for social needs. Simkhovitch was the only woman to address the gathering. All the male speakers emphasized planning for economic development. As architects, lawyers, and engineers, and new professional planners such as John Nolen and George Ford dominated the planning conferences, Simkhovitch and Kelley withdrew. 35

The democratic reform theories of Frederic Howe and Mary Parker Follett reflected competing ideas about political Progressivism and urban reform. Howe believed that democracy was a political mechanism that, if properly ordered and led by experts, would restore the city to the people. The key to achieving good government and democracy was municipal home rule. Once freed from state interference, his theoretical city republic would decide in the best interests of its residents, making city life orderly and thereby more democratic. 36 For Follett, democracy was embedded in social relations, and the city was the hope of democracy because it could be organized on the neighborhood level. There people would apply democracy collectively and create an orderly society. 37 Throughout the country, municipal political reform was driven primarily by groups of men. Women and their ideas were consistently pushed to the margins of political Progressivism. 38

Social Science Expertise

Social science expertise gave political Progressives a theoretical foundation for cautious proposals to create a more activist state. University of Wisconsin political economist Richard Ely; his former student John R. Commons; political scientist Charles McCarthy, who authored the Wisconsin Idea; and University of Michigan political economist Henry C. Adams, among others, filled the role of social science expert. Social scientists founded new disciplinary organizations, such as the American Economics Association. This association organized the American Association of Labor Legislation (AALL). Commons, University of Chicago sociology professor Charles R. Henderson, and Commons’ student John B. Andrews were prominent members. The AALL focused on workers’ health, compensation, and insurance, in contrast to the NCL emphasis on investigation and working conditions. 39 Frederic Howe, with a PhD in history and political science from Johns Hopkins, became a foremost theorist for municipal reform based on his social science theories. John Dewey promulgated new theories of democracy and education. Professional social scientists composed a tight circle of men who created a space between academia and government from which to advocate for reform. 40 They addressed each other, trained their students to follow their ideas, and rarely spoke to the larger public. 41

Sophonisba Breckinridge, Frances Kellor, Edith Abbott, and Katherine Davis were trained at the University of Chicago in political economy and sociology. Abbott briefly held an academic position at Wellesley, but she resigned to join the other women in applying her training to social research and social activism. Their expertise laid the foundation for the profession of social work. As grassroots activists, they worked with settlement house residents such as Jane Addams and Mary Simkhovitch, joined women’s voluntary organizations, investigated living and working conditions, and carved out careers in social welfare. 42

Male social scientists dismissed women’s expertise and eschewed grassroots work. 43 Breckinridge had earned a magna cum laude PhD in political science and economics, but she received no offers of an academic position, unlike her male colleagues. She was kept on at the university, but by 1920 the sociology department directed social sciences away from seeking practical solutions to everyday life that had linked scholarly inquiry with social responsibility. The female social scientists who had formed an intellectual core of the sociology department were put into a School of Social Services Administration and ultimately segregated into the division of social work. 44

Economic Progressivism

Economic Progressives identified unregulated corporate monopoly capitalism as a primary source of the country’s troubles. 45 They proposed a new regulatory state to mitigate the worst aspects of the system. Reforming the banking and currency systems, pursuing some measure of antitrust (antimonopoly) legislation, shifting from a largely laissez-faire economy, and moderately restructuring property relations would produce government in the public interest.

Antimonopoly Progressivism

Antimonopoly Progressivism required rethinking the relationship between business and government, introducing new legislation, and modifying a legal system that consistently sided with business. Congress and the presidency had to take leadership roles, but below them were Progressive groups such as the National Civic Federation, the NCL, and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs pushing for significant policy change. These Progressives believed collusion between a small number of capitalist industrialists and politicians had badly damaged democracy. They especially feared that the system threatened to lead to class warfare.

The Interstate Commerce Act ( 1887 ) and the Sherman Antitrust Act ( 1890 ) began to consider the problems of unregulated laissez-faire capitalism and monopoly in restraint of trade. As president, Theodore Roosevelt ( 1901–1909 ) used congressional power to regulate commerce to attack corporate monopolistic restraint of trade. The Elkins Act ( 1903 ) gave Congress the power to regulate against predatory business practices; the Hepburn Act ( 1906 ) gave it authority to regulate railroad rates; the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act ( 1906 ) did the same for those industries. Roosevelt created the Department of Commerce and Labor ( 1903 ) to oversee interstate corporate practices and in 1906 empowered the Department of Agriculture to inspect and set standards in meat production, a move that led eventually to the Food and Drug Administration.

Presidential Progressivism

Roosevelt considered the president to be the guardian of the public welfare. His approach to conservation was a primary example of how he applied this belief. He agreed with the arguments of social scientists, professional organizations of engineers, and forestry bureau chief Gifford Pinchot that careful and efficient management and administration of natural resources was necessary to guarantee the country’s economic progress and preserve democratic opportunity. Roosevelt appointed a Public Lands Commission to manage public land in the West and appointed a National Conservation Commission to inventory the country’s resources so that sound business practices could be implemented. The commission’s three-volume report relied on scientific and social scientific methods to examine conservation issues. 46

William Howard Taft ( 1909–1913 ) refused to support further work by the Conservation Commission. He rejected new conservation proposals as violating congressional authority and possessing no legal standing. Taft’s administrative appointments, including Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger, favored opening public lands to more private development. Taft’s Progressivism was the more conservative Republican approach that focused on breaking up trusts because they were bad for business. 47 Taft sided with business when he signed the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act ( 1909 ), which kept high tariffs on many essential goods that Progressives wanted reduced to aid consumers and small manufacturers. 48

In 1912 , the Republican Party split between Roosevelt and Taft. Political, economic, and social justice Progressives, including Robert La Follette, Charles McCarthy, Jane Addams, Frances Kellor, and George Perkins, a partner at J. P. Morgan and Company, helped establish the Progressive Party. They nominated Roosevelt, who envisioned a platform of “New Nationalism,” which promised to govern in the public interest and provide economic prosperity as a basic foundation of democratic citizenship. 49 Addams was unhappy with Roosevelt’s economic emphasis, but she saw him as social Progressives’ best hope.

Woodrow Wilson and Roosevelt received two-thirds of the vote, while Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs secured 6 percent of the votes. The election results indicated that the general population supported a middle way between socialism and Taft’s big business Progressivism. Wilson’s ( 1913–1921 ) “New Freedom” platform promised to curb the power of big business and close the growing wealth gap. As senator, La Follette helped push through Wilson’s reform legislation. The Clayton Antitrust Act ( 1914 ), the Federal Trade Commission ( 1914 ), and the Federal Reserve Act ( 1913 ) each curbed the power of big business and regulated banking. The Sixteenth Amendment ( 1913 ) authorized the federal income tax. The Seventeenth Amendment ( 1913 ) provided for the direct election of state legislators, who had previously been appointed by state legislatures.

Trade Union Progressivism

Under Samuel Gompers, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) fought to secure collective bargaining rights for male trade unionists. The AFL rejected the AALL proposals for worker compensation and insurance and never supported national worker compensation laws, although local federations supported state-level legislation. 50 Gompers preferred working with businessmen and politicians to secure the right to collective bargaining, the eight-hour day, and a voice for labor in production. The AFL never tried to form a Labor Party but advocated putting a labor agenda into mainstream party politics. 51 The Clayton Antitrust Act, which acknowledged that unions had the right to peaceful and lawful actions, was a victory for trade union Progressivism. The act did not provide everything that Gompers had demanded. Only New Deal legislation would offer more extensive protections to unions.

Gompers and the AFL rejected the AALL’s ideas, fearing that a more activist government might extend to regulating the labor of women and children. The AFL wanted sufficient economic security for white male workers, to move women out of the labor force. 52 Other labor Progressives sought the same end. Louis Brandeis and Father John Ryan promoted the living wage as a right of citizenship for male workers. Ryan acknowledged that unmarried women workers were entitled to a living wage, but he wanted labor reform to secure a family wage so that men would marry and families would produce children. 53 Hostile to organizing women, Gompers forced NWTUL leader Margaret Dreier Robins off the executive board of the Chicago Federation of Labor. 54

Municipal Ownership

On the local level, economic Progressives sought a middle way between socialism and the AFL’s single-minded trade unionism. AFL affiliates and Progressive politicians such as Cleveland’s Tom Johnson favored a municipal democracy that gave voters new powers. Municipal ownership of public utilities such as street railways promised the working class a way to protect their labor through the ballot. 55 Such reform would also destroy the franchise system. In Los Angeles, labor and socialists crafted a labor/socialist ticket to challenge the business/party control of the city and enact municipal ownership. A socialist administration in Milwaukee appealed to class interests to support an agenda that included municipal ownership. In Chicago, socialist Josephine Kaneko argued that she did not see much difference between socialism and women’s Progressive agenda for reform to benefit the common welfare. 56 Despite such flirtations between labor and socialists, labor remained attached to the Democratic Party.

Some cities achieved a measure of municipal ownership. Most middle-class urban Progressives deemed municipal ownership too socialist. They favored state economic regulation, led by experts, rather than ownership to break the monopoly in public utilities. 57

International Progressivism

Progressivism fostered new international engagement. The economic imperative to secure supplies of raw materials for industrial production, a messianic approach of bringing cultural and racial civilization around the globe, and belief in an international Progressivism that focused on international cooperation all pushed Progressives to think globally.

Securing Economic Progress

Although he was generally against Progressivism, President William McKinley annexed Hawaii ( 1898 ), saying that the country needed it even more than it had needed California. 58 The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine ( 1904 ) declared that intervention in the Caribbean was necessary to secure economic stability and forestall foreign interference in the area. Progressive Herbert Croly believed that the country needed to forcibly pacify some areas in the world in order for the United States to establish an American international system. 59 The Progressive Party platform ( 1912 ) declared it imperative to the people’s welfare that the country expand its foreign commerce. Between 1898 and 1941 , the United States invaded Cuba, acquired the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, took possession of Puerto Rico, colonized the Philippines and several Pacific islands, encouraged Panama to rebel against Colombia so that the United States could build the Panama Canal, invaded Mexico to protect oil interests, and intervened in Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. To protect its possessions in the Pacific, Roosevelt’s Secretary of State Elihu Root finalized the Root-Takahira Agreement ( 1908 ), which acknowledged Japan’s control of Korea in return for its noninterference in the Philippines. American imperialism based on economic and financial desires became referred to as “Dollar Diplomacy.” 60

Mission of Civilization

Race, paternalism, and masculinity characterized elements of international Progressivism. Senator Albert Beveridge had supported Progressive proposals to abolish child labor and had favored regulating business and granting more rights to labor, but he viewed Filipinos as too backward to understand democracy and self-government. The United States was God’s chosen nation, with a divine mission to civilize the world; it should exercise its “spirit of progress” to organize the world. 61 William Jennings Bryan had previously been an anti-imperialist, but later, as Wilson’s secretary of state, he advocated intervening in Latin America to tutor backward people in self-government. 62 In speeches and writings, Roosevelt stressed that new international possessions required men to accept the strenuous life of responsibility for other people in order to maintain American domination of the world. 63 Social science likened Filipino men to children lacking the vigorous manhood necessary for self-government. 64 Beveridge contended that it was government’s responsibility to manufacture manhood. Empire could be the new frontier of white masculinity. 65 Roosevelt concluded a “Gentlemen’s Agreement” ( 1907 ) in which Japan agreed to stop issuing passports to Japanese laborers to immigrate to the United States.

Democracy and International Cooperation

A cadre of Progressives who had worked to extend their ideals into an international context did not welcome imperialism, dollar diplomacy, and war. 66 Addams rejected war as an anachronism that failed to produce a collective responsibility. La Follette rejoiced that failures in dollar diplomacy elevated humanity over property. Suffragists compared their lack of the vote to the plight of Filipinos. Belle Case La Follette opposed incursion into Mexico and denounced all militarism as driven by greed, suspicion, and love of power. 67

Many Progressives opposed war as an assault on an international collective humanity. Women organized peace marches and founded a Women’s Peace Party. Addams, Kelley, Frederic Howe, Lillian Wald of New York’s Henry Street Settlement, and Paul Kellogg, editor of the Progressive Survey , formed the American Union Against Militarism. 68 Addams, Simkhovitch, the sociologist Emily Greene Balch, and labor leader Leonora O’Reilly attended the International Women’s Peace Conference at The Hague in spring 1915 . Florence Kelley was denied a passport to travel. 69 The work of the American Red Cross in Europe during and after the war reflected the humanitarian collective impulse of Progressivism. 70

Entry into World War I, President Wilson’s assertion that it would make the world safe for democracy, and a growing xenophobia that demanded 100 percent loyalty produced a Progressive crisis. Addams remained firm against the war as antihumanitarian and was vilified for her pacifism. 71 La Follette voted against the declaration of war, charging that it was being promoted by business desires and that it was absurd to believe that it would make the world safe for democracy. He was accused of being pro-German, and Theodore Roosevelt said that he should be hung. 72 Labor leader Morris Hillquit and Florence Kelley formed the People’s Council of America to continue to pressure for peace. Under pressure to display patriotism, Progressive opposition to the war crumbled. Paul Kellogg declared that it was time to combat European militarism. The American Union Against Militarism dissolved. Herbert Croly’s New Republic urged the country to take a more active role in the war to create a new international league of peace and assume leadership of democratic nations. John Dewey proclaimed it a war of peoples, not armies, and stated that international reform would follow its conclusion. 73

Other Progressives comforted themselves that once the war was won, they could recommit to democratic agendas. Kelley, Grace Abbott, Josephine Goldmark, and Julia Lathrop helped organize the home front to maintain Progressive ideals. They monitored the condition of women workers, sat on the war department’s board controlling labor standards, and drafted insurance policies for military personnel. Suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt volunteered for the Women’s Advisory Committee of the Council of National Defense. Walter Lippmann worked on government projects. City planner John Nolen designed housing communities for war workers under the newly constituted United States Housing Corporation. 74

Suffragists protested the lack of democracy in the United States. As Wilson refused to support woman suffrage, members of the National Woman’s Party, led by Alice Paul, picketed the White House in protest. Picketers were arrested, Paul was put in solitary confinement in a psychiatric ward, and several women on a hunger strike were force-fed. Wilson capitulated to public outrage over the women’s treatment. The women were released, and Wilson urged passage of the suffrage amendment. 75 The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920 , but Progressives’ hopes that equal political rights would bring democratic equality were not fulfilled. The social justice Progressives split over whether to support the Equal Rights Amendment drawn up by the National Woman’s Party, fearing that it would negate the protective labor legislation they had achieved.

Racialized Progressivism

White Progressives failed to pursue racial equality. Most of them believed the country was not yet ready for such a cultural shift. Some of them believed in theories of racial inferiority. Southern Progressive figure Rebecca Latimer Felton defended racial lynching as a means to protect white women. 76 Other Progressives, such as Sophonisba Breckinridge, fought against racial exclusion policies and promoted interracial cooperation. 77 W. E. B. Du Bois and Addams helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( 1909 ).

African American Progressivism

African Americans believed that Progressive ideology should lead inevitably to racial equality. Du Bois spoke at public forums. 78 He supported the social justice Progressives’ agenda, attending the 1912 Progressive Party convention. Du Bois proposed a racial equality plank for the party platform. Jane Addams helped write the plank. Theodore Roosevelt rejected it, preferring the gradualist policy of Booker T. Washington. Addams objected but mused that perhaps it was not yet time for such a bold move. Racial justice would follow logically from dedication to social justice. 79 Du Bois shifted his support to Woodrow Wilson, while Ida B. Wells-Barnett backed Taft. In 1916 , African American women founded Colored Women’s Hughes clubs to support the Republican nominee. Hughes had reluctantly backed woman suffrage, and African American women viewed suffrage as the means to protect the race. Nannie Helen Burroughs worked through the National Association of Colored Women ( 1896 ) and the National Baptist Convention, demanding suffrage for African American women because they would use it wisely, for the benefit of the race. Burroughs lived in Washington, DC, where she witnessed the segregationist policies of the Wilson administration. She castigated African American men for having voted for him in 1912 . 80 African American Progressives hoped that serving in the military and organizing on the home front during the war would result in equal citizenship when the war ended. Instead, African Americans were subjected to more prejudice and violence. Southern senators blocked the Dyer antilynching bill ( 1922 ).

Immigration Restriction

Anti-immigrant sentiment had been building in the country since passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act ( 1882 ). Several attempts to pass a literacy test bill for immigrants, supported by the Immigration Restriction League ( 1894 ), failed. The forty-one volumes of the Senate-appointed Dillingham Commission ( 1911 ) concluded that immigrants were heavily responsible for the country’s problems and advocated the literacy test. Frances Kellor believed that all immigrants could be Americanized. Randolph Bourne advocated immigration as the path to Americans becoming internationalists. The New Republic , however, feared that excessive immigration would overwhelm an activist state and prevent it from solving social problems. Lillian Wald, Frederic Howe, and other Progressives organized the National Committee for Constructive Immigration Legislation ( 1916 ) hoping to forestall more restrictive measures. In the midst of war fever, Congress passed a literacy test bill over Wilson’s veto ( 1917 ).

100-percent Americanism

Progressives such as Kellor, Wald, and Addams believed that incorporating immigrants into a broad American culture would create a Progressive modern society. Theodore Roosevelt promoted a racialized version of American society. As president, he secured new laws ( 1903 , 1907 ) to exclude certain classes of immigrants—paupers, the insane, prostitutes, and radicals who might pose a threat to American standards of labor—that he deemed incapable of becoming good Americans. He created the Bureau of Immigration to enforce these provisions. The 1907 Immigration Act also stripped citizenship from women who married noncitizens, a situation only reversed in 1922 . At Roosevelt’s behest, Congress tightened requirements for naturalization. Wartime fever and the 1919 Red Scare intensified the search for 100 percent Americanism and undermined the alternative Progressive ideal of a cooperative Americanism. 81

Progressivism beyond the Progressive Era

The democratizing ideals of the Progressive era lived beyond the time period. A regulatory state to eliminate the worst effects of capitalism was created, as most Americans accepted that the federal state had to take on more social responsibility. After ratification of the suffrage amendment, the National American Woman Suffrage Association reconstituted as the National League of Women Voters ( 1920 ) to continue promoting an informed, democratic electorate. The New Deal implemented a substantial social justice Progressive agenda, with the NCL, the Children’s Bureau, and many women who had formed the earlier era’s agenda writing the legislation banning child labor, fostering new labor standards that included minimum wage and maximum hours, and mandating social security for the elderly. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs focused on environmental protection as a democratic right. A women’s joint congressional committee formed to continue pressing for social justice legislation. The National Association of Colored Women joined the committee.

Progressives can be legitimately criticized for not undertaking a more radical restructuring of American society. Some of them can be criticized for believing that they possessed the best vision for a modern, Progressive future. They can be faulted for not promoting racial equality or a new internationalism that might bring about global peace rather than war. Nonetheless, they never intended to undermine capitalism, so they could never truly embrace socialism. In the context of a society that continued to exalt individualism and suspect government interference and working within their own notions of democracy, they accomplished significant changes in American government and society. 82

Discussion of the Literature

The muckraking authors and journalists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries highlighted rapacious capitalism and characterized its wealthy beneficiaries as corrupting the country. In their exposés of the relationship between business and politics, Ida M. Tarbell, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair accused politicians of a corrupt bargain in pursuit of their own economic interests against the interests of the people. 83 Drawing upon these investigative writings, early analyses of Progressivism from Benjamin De Witt and Charles and Mary Beard interpreted Progressivism as a dualistic class struggle. On one side were wealthy and privileged special interests seeking to promote themselves at the expense of everyone else. On the other side was a broad public seeking to restore dignity and opportunity to the common people. 84

By the early 1950s, George Mowry and Richard Hofstadter contended that Progressivism was a movement of an older, professional, middle class seeking to reclaim its status, deference, and power, which had been usurped by a new corporate elite and a corrupt political class. 85 In the early 1960s, Samuel Hays argued that rather than being the product of a status revolution, Progressivism was the work of an urban upper class of new and younger leading Republican business and professional men. 86 Robert Wiebe shifted the analysis to describe a broader middle-class Progressivism of new professional men who wished to reorder society by applying bureaucratic and business-oriented skills to political and economic institutions. 87 In Wiebe’s organizational thesis, Progressives were modernizers with a structural-instrumentalist agenda. They rejected reliance on older values and cultural norms to order society and sought to create a modern reordered society with political and economic institutions run by men qualified to apply fiscal expertise, businesslike efficiency, and modern scientific expertise to solve problems and save democracy. 88 The emerging academic disciplines in the social sciences of economics, political economy and political science, and pragmatic education supplied the theoretical bases for this middle-class expert Progressivism. 89 Gabriel Kolko countered such analyses, arguing that Progressivism was a conservative movement promoted by business to protect itself. 90

Professional men and their organizations kept copious records from which scholars could draw this interpretation. By the late 1960s, scholars began to examine the role of other groups in reform movements, ask different questions, and utilize different sources. John Buenker called Progressivism a pluralistic effort, an ethnocultural struggle based on religious values in which urban immigrants and their democratic politicians resisted the old-stock Protestant elites whose Progressive agenda they believed was aimed at homogenizing American culture through policies such as Prohibition and immigration restriction. Ethnic groups were not anti-Progressive but promoted a new Progressive agenda of economic regulation and rights for labor. 91 In the face of conflicting interpretations, Peter Filene questioned whether there indeed was a Progressive movement. Daniel T. Rodgers posited that Progressivism could best be understood as a shift from party politics to interest groups politics. 92

In the last decades of the 20th century, historians began to distance themselves from the very notions of Progressivism. They criticized Progressivism as the ultimate end of a middle-class search for social control of the masses, or they focused on its class dimension. 93 Recent literature has reconsidered the meaning of the Progressive era. Revisiting his early 1980s essay, Daniel T. Rodgers proposed that the big picture of Progressivism was a reaction to the capitalist transformation of society. Robert D. Johnston saw a revived debate concerning the democratic nature of Progressivism and its connections to the present. 94 A recent book by Robyn Muncy takes another look at the emphasis on Progressivism as a social struggle through the biography of Colorado reformer Josephine Roche and her focus on creating social welfare reforms. 95

Primary Sources

There is a wealth of accessible primary source material on Progressives and Progressivism. Many of these documents can now be found through electronic sources such as HathiTrust, Archive.org, and Google Books.

Consult any of the writings of Jane Addams, Louis Brandeis, John R. Commons, Herbert Croly, John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary Parker Follett, Frederic Howe, Florence Kelley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Muckrakers Lincoln Steffens , in The Shame of the Cities (1904) ; Jacob Riis , in How the Other Half Lives: Among the Tenements of New York (1890) ; and Upton Sinclair , in The Jungle (1906) , expose urban political corruption and social conditions. Ida M. Tarbell , in The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904) ; and Frank Norris , in Octopus: A Story of California (1901) , expose business practices. The residents of Hull House published an investigative survey of living conditions in their neighborhood in Hull House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, Together with Comments and Essays on Problems Growing out of Social Conditions ( 1895 ). Useful autobiographies are Tom Johnson , My Story (New York: B. W. Heubsch, 1913) ; Louise DeKoven Bowen , Growing Up with a City (New York: Macmillan, 1926) ; Jane Addams , Twenty Years at Hull House (New York: Macmillan, 1910) ; Ida B. Wells-Barnett , Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida. B. Wells , edited by Alfreda Duster (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

Manuscript collections for national and local organizations and individuals include those of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, National Association of Colored Women, Ellen Gates Starr, Women’s City Club of New York, Sophonisba Breckinridge, National Women’s Trade Union League, National Consumers League, and Theodore Roosevelt. Publications of Progressive groups and organizations include Woman Citizen’s Library , Survey , Charities and Commons , New Republic , and National Municipal Review . Investigative reports include the six volumes of the the Pittsburgh Survey ( 1909–1914 ) and Reports of the Immigration Commission (Dillingham Commission), in forty-one volumes ( 1911 ).

Proceedings of organization conferences include those of the National Conferences on City Planning and Congestion, National Conferences on City Planning, International Conference on Women Workers to Promote Peace, and American Federation of Labor. Supreme Court rulings include Ritchie v. People ( 1895 ), Plessy v. Ferguson ( 1896 ), Holden v. Hardy ( 1898 ), Lochner v. New York ( 1905 ), and Muller v. Oregon ( 1908 ).

Links to Digital Materials

Cornell university, ilr school, kheel center.

1911 Triangle Fire .

The History Place

Lewis Hines photos of child labor .

Library of Congress

Child labor collection .

World War I posters .

The National American Woman Suffrage Association .

The National Woman’s Party and protesters .

Theodore Roosevelt .

The Conservation Movement .

University of Illinois Chicago, Special Collections

Settlement houses in Chicago .

Harvard University Library Open Collections Program

Immigration to the United States, 1789‐1930 .

Further Reading

• Connolly, James J. The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston, 1900–1925 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
• Dawley, Alan . Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.
• Flanagan, Maureen A. Seeing with Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871–1933 . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
• Flanagan, Maureen A. America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890s–1920s . New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Greene, Julie . The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal . New York: Penguin, 2009.
• Hofstadter, Richard . The Age of Reform . New York: Vintage Books, 1955.
• Keller, Morton . Regulating a New Economy: Public Policy and Economic Change in America, 1900–1933 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
• Knight, Louise W. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Mattson, Kevin . Creating a Democratic Public: The Struggle for Urban Participatory Democracy During the Progressive Era . University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.
• McGerr, Michael . A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 . New York: Free Press, 2003.
• Muncy, Robyn . Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935 . New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Muncy, Robyn . Relentless Reformer: Josephine Roche and Progressivism in Twentieth-Century America . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
• Piott, Steven L. American Reformers, 1870–1920: Progressives in Word and Deed . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.
• Rodgers, Daniel T. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
• Salyer, Lucy . Laws Harsh As Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
• Schechter, Patricia A. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880–1930 . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
• Sklar, Martin J. The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916 . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
• Unger, Nancy . Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
• Wiebe, Robert H. The Search for Order, 1877–1920 . New York: Hill and Wang, 1967.

1. Maureen A. Flanagan , America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890s–1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 10.

2. Jane Addams , Democracy and Social Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1902).

3. Michael Les Benedict , “Law and Regulation in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” in Law as Culture and Culture as Law: Essays in Honor of John Philip Reid , ed. Hendrick Hartog and William E. Nelson (Madison, WI: Madison House Publishers, 2000), 227–263 ; Christopher L. Tomlins , The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in American 1880–1960 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

4. Michael Willrich , City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 100–103.

5. Nancy Woloch , Muller v. Oregon: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 1996).

6. Victoria Getis , The Juvenile Court and the Progressives (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000).

7. Jennifer Koslow , Cultivating Health: Los Angeles Women and Public Health Reform (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009) ; Daphne Spain , How Women Saved the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) ; Anne Firor Scott , Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992) ; and Judith N. McArthur , Creating the New Woman: The Rise of Southern Women’s Progressive Culture in Texas, 1893–1918 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998).

8. Nancy C. Unger , Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 86 , for the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. See Arthur S. Link and Richard L. McCormick , Progressivism (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1983), 38 ; Robert H. Wiebe , The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1967), 191 ; Vincent P. DeSantis, The Shaping of Modern America, 1877–1920 (Arlington Heights, IL: Forum Press), 184; and Daniel Block , “Saving Milk through Masculinity: Public Health Officers and Pure Milk, 1880–1930,” Food and Foodways: History and Culture of Human Nourishment 15 (January–June 2005): 115–135.

9. Kriste Lindenmeyer , “A Right to Childhood”: The U.S. Children’s Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912–46 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 10–29 and 114–132.

10. Maureen A. Flanagan , Seeing with Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871–1933 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002) ; and Scott, Natural Allies , 159–174.

11. Robyn Muncy , Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 132–150, 152–154 ; Lindenmeyer, “A Right to Childhood,” chap. 4, esp. 100–103; and Lynne Curry , Modern Mothers in the Heartland: Gender, Health, and Progress in Illinois, 1900–1930 (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1999), 120–131.

12. Scott, Natural Allies , 147

13. Landon R. Y. Storrs , Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers’ League, Women’s Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), chap. 1.

14. Elizabeth Payne , Reform, Labor, and Feminism: Margaret Dreier Robins and the Women’s Trade Union League (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988).

15. Kevin Mattson , Creating a Democratic Public: The Struggle for Urban Participatory Democracy During the Progressive Era (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 45.

16. Mattson, Creating a Democratic Public , includes a chapter on Follett, but the rest of the book focuses on men. Alan Dawley , Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 102 , shortchanges women’s Progressivism, saying it “merely extended the boundaries of women’s sphere to the realm of ‘social housekeeping’”; Daniel T. Rodgers , Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 19–20, 239–240 , calls them “social maternalists” rather than social justice Progressives and claims that they were motivated by “sentiment” and focused on protecting “women’s weakness.” For Chicago women’s clubs, see Elizabeth Belanger , “The Neighborhood Ideal: Local Planning-Practices in Progressive-Era Women’s Clubs,” Journal of Planning History 8.2 (May 2009): 87–110.

17. Nancy Unger , Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) . Charles McCarthy , The Wisconsin Idea (New York: Macmillan, 1912).

18. Robert D. Johnston , The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 123.

19. Martin J. Schiesl , The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal Administration and Reform in American, 1880–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) , provides the clearest overall picture of these elements of this political Progressivism.

20. Committee on Municipal Program of the National Municipal League , A Model City Charter and Municipal Home Rule (Philadelphia: National Municipal League, 1916).

21. Amy Bridges , Morning Glories: Municipal Reform in the Southwest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999) ; Bradley R. Rice , “The Galveston Plan of City Government by Commission: The Birth of a Progressive Idea,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly , 78.4 (April 1975): 365–408 ; and Schiesl, The Politics of Efficiency , 136–137 for Des Moines.

22. Kenneth Finegold , Experts and Politicians: Reform Challenges to Machine Politics in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 82–88 for Johnson and 107–111 for charter reform in Cleveland.

23. Maureen A. Flanagan , Charter Reform in Chicago (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1987).

24. James J. Connolly , The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston, 1900–1925 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 106–107.

25. David Stradling , Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers, and Air Quality in America, 1881–1951 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 21–36.

26. Angela Gugliotta , “How, When, and for Whom Was Smoke a Problem?” in Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region , ed. Joel Tarr (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), 118–120.

27. Stradling, Smokestacks and Progressives , 63–67 and 108–137, provides a comprehensive overview of the political Progressivism of smoke pollution.

28. Angela Gugliotta , “Class, Gender, and Coal Smoke: Gender Ideology and Environmental Injustice in Pittsburgh, 1868–1914,” Environmental History 6.2 (April 2000): 173–176.

29. Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts , 100–102 and America Reformed , 173–179. See Scott, Natural Allies , 143–145 for more on women’s health protective associations.

30. Anne-Marie Szymanski , “Regulatory Transformations in a Changing City: The Anti-Smoke Movement in Baltimore, 1895–1931,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 13.3 (July 2014): 364–366.

31. William H. Wilson , The City Beautiful Movement (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985) ; and Jon A. Peterson , The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840–1917 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003) , Parts 2 and 3.

32. Carl A. Smith , The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

33. Max Page , The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900–1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) ; and Mel Scott , American City Planning since 1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971) , Parts 2, 3, and 4.

34. Eric Sandweiss , St. Louis: The Evolution of an American Urban Landscape (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).

35. Susan Marie Wirka , “The City Social Movement: Progressive Women Reformers and Early Social Planning,” in Planning the Twentieth-Century American City , ed. Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 55–75 ; and Maureen A. Flanagan , “City Profitable, City Livable: Environmental Policy, Gender, and Power in Chicago in the 1910s,” Journal of Urban History 22.2 (January 1996): 163–190.

36. Frederic Howe , The City: The Hope of Democracy (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1905).

37. Mary Parker Follett , The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government (New York: Longmans, Green, 1918).

38. Connolly, The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism.

39. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings , 236–238, 251–254.

40. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings , 108–109.

41. Dorothy Ross , The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 158–159.

42. Ellen Fitzpatrick , Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

43. Theda Skocpol , Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 183.

44. Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade , 40–44, 80, 82, and 90–91.

45. Martin J. Sklar , The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

46. Samuel P. Hays , Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Movement, 1890–1920 (repr., New York: Atheneum, 1969), chap. 7.

47. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency , chap. 8.

48. DeSantis, The Shaping of Modern America , 194–199.

49. Eric Rauchway , Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), 189–200.

50. Morton Keller , Regulating a New Society: Public Policy and Social Change in America, 1900–1930 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 194–196.

51. Julie Greene , Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881–1917 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 219, 279 ; and Shelton Stromquist, Reinventing the “People”: The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 66.

52. Greene, Pure and Simple Politics , 9, 235.

53. Fr. John Ryan , The Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects (New York: Macmillan, 1906), 283–285 . Richard Ely wrote the book’s introduction.

54. Payne, Reform, Labor, and Feminism , 95–107.

55. Shelton Stromquist , “The Crucible of Class: Cleveland Politics and the Origins of Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era,” Journal of Urban History 23.2 (January 1997): 192–220.

56. Daniel J. Johnson , “‘No Make-Believe Class Struggle’: The Socialist Municipal Campaign in Los Angeles, 1922,” Labor History 41.1 (February 2000): 25–45 ; Douglas E. Booth , “Municipal Socialism and City Government Reform: The Milwaukee Experience, 1910–1940,” Journal of Urban History 12.1 (November 1985): 51–71 ; and Josephine Kaneko , “What a Socialist Alderman Would Do,” Coming Nation (March 1914).

57. Gail Radford , “From Municipal Socialism to Public Authorities: Institutional Factors in the Shaping of American Public Enterprise,” Journal of American History 90.3 (December 2003): 863–890.

58. Nell Irvin Painter , Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 150.

59. Herbert Croly , The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan, 1909).

60. Emily Rosenberg , Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).

61. Matthew Frye Jacobson , Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917 (New York: Hill & Wang, 2000), 227.

62. Alan Dawley , Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 81.

63. Theodore Roosevelt , The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (New York: Century, 1903).

64. George F. Becker , “Conditions Requisite to Our Success in the Philippine Islands,” address to the American Geographical Society, February 20, 1901, Bulletin of the American Geographical Society (1901): 112–123.

65. Albert Beveridge , The Young Man and the World (New York: Appleton, 1905), 338 ; and Kristen Hoganson , Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).

66. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings , is the most complete analysis of this internationalism.

67. Jane Addams , Newer Ideals of Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1907) ; Robert La Follette , LaFollette’s Weekly 5.1 (March 29, 1913) ; Kristen Hoganson , “‘As Badly-Off As the Filipinos’: U.S. Women Suffragists and the Imperial Issue at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Women’s History 13.2 (Summer 2001): 9–33 ; and Nancy C. Unger , Belle La Follette: Progressive Era Reformer (New York: Routledge, 2015).

68. David Kennedy , Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).

69. Harriet Hyman , introduction to Women at The Hague , by Jane Addams , Emily Greene Balch , and Alice Hamilton (repr., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003) ; and Kathryn Kish Sklar , “‘Some of Us Who Deal with the Social Fabric’: Jane Addams Blends Peace and Social Justice,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2.1 (January 2003): 80–96.

70. Julia F. Irwin , Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

71. Jane Addams , Peace and Bread in Time of War (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 4–5.

72. Unger, Fighting Bob La Follette , chap. 14.

73. Kennedy, Over Here , 34; New Republic 10 (February 10 and 17, 1917); and Dawley, Changing the World , 122, 147, 165–169.

74. Walter Lippmann , “The World Conflict in Relation to American Democracy,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 72 (July 1917): 1–10 ; Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings , 283–285, 288–289; and Dawley, Changing the World , 147.

75. Christine Lunardini , From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910–1928 (New York: New York University Press, 1986).

76. LeeAnn Whites , “Love, Hate, Rape, and Lynching: Rebecca Latimer Fulton and the Gender Politics of Racial Violence,” in Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy , ed. David Cecelski and Timothy B. Tyron (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

77. Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade , 180–181.

78. Mattson, Creating a Democratic Public , 44.

79. David Levering Lewis , W. E. B. DuBois: A Biography, 1868–1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2009), 276–277 ; and Gary Gerstle , American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 77–78 , for Addams.

80. Lisa G. Masterson , Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877–1932 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 101–106.

81. John Higham , Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1869–1925 (1955; repr. New York: Atheneum, 1974), 129–130, 222–224 ; and Gerstle, American Crucible , 55–56.

82. Robert D. Johnston , “Long Live Teddy/Death to Woodrow: The Polarized Politics of the Progressive Era in the 2012 Election,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 13.3 (July 2014): 411–443.

83. Ida M. Tarbell , The History of the Standard Oil Company (New York: McClure, Phillips, 1904) ; Frank Norris , The Octopus: A Story of California (New York: Doubleday, 1901) ; and Upton Sinclair , The Jungle (New York: Jungle Publishing, 1906).

84. Benjamin De Witt , The Progressive Movement (New York: Macmillan, 1915) ; and Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard , The Rise of American Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1927).

85. George E. Mowry , The California Progressives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951) ; and Richard Hofstadter , The Age of Reform (New York: Vintage Books, 1955).

86. Samuel P. Hays , “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” Pacific Historical Review 55.4 (October 1964): 157–159.

87. Robert H. Wiebe , Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962) ; and Wiebe, The Search for Order .

88. Schiesl, The Politics of Efficiency ; and Finegold, Experts and Politicians.

89. John Louis Recchiuti , Social Science and Progressive Era Reform in New York City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) ; and Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science .

90. Gabriel Kolko , The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York: Free Press, 1963).

91. John D. Buenker , Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1973).

92. Peter G. Filene , “An Obituary for the Progressive Movement,” American Quarterly 22.1 (Spring 1970): 20–34 ; and Daniel T. Rodgers , “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History 10.4 (December 1982): 113–132.

93. Paul Boyer , Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978) ; Michael McGerr , A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Free Press, 2003) ; and Jackson Lears , Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920 (New York: Harper, 2009).

94. Daniel T. Rodgers , “Capitalism and Politics in the Progressive Era and in Ours,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 13.3 (July 2014): 379–386 ; Robert D. Johnston, “Long Live Teddy/Death to Woodrow, 411–443; and Stromquist, Reinventing the “People.”

95. Robyn Muncy , Relentless Reformer: Josephine Roche and Progressivism in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).

Related Articles

• Struggles over Individual Rights and State Power in the Progressive Era
• Anti-Imperialism

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The Gilded Age & the Progressive Era (1877–1917)

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The Gilded Age and the first years of the twentieth century were a time of great social change and economic growth in the United States. Roughly spanning the years between Reconstruction and the dawn of the new century, the Gilded Age saw rapid industrialization, urbanization, the construction of great transcontinental railroads, innovations in science and technology, and the rise of big business. Afterward, the first years of the new century that followed were dominated by progressivism, a forward-looking political movement that attempted to redress some of the ills that had arisen during the Gilded Age. Progressives passed legislation to rein in big business, combat corruption, free the government from special interests, and protect the rights of consumers, workers, immigrants, and the poor.

Some historians have dubbed the presidents of the Gilded Age the “forgotten presidents,” and indeed many Americans today have trouble remembering their names, what they did for the country, or even in which era they served. These six men—Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, and Benjamin Harrison—had relatively unremarkable terms in office and faced few if any major national crises during their presidencies. Some historians have suggested that these Gilded Age presidents were unexciting for a reason—because Americans wanted to avoid bold politicians who might ruin the delicate peace established after the Civil War.

This is not to say politics were unimportant in the Gilded Age. On the contrary, Americans paid more attention to politics and national elections during the post–Civil War period than at any other time in history, because each election had the potential to disrupt the fragile balance—and peace—between North and South, Republican and Democrat. Voters turned out in record numbers for each presidential election in the late nineteenth century, with voter turnout sometimes reaching 80 percent or greater. The intensity of the elections also helps explain why Congress passed so little significant legislation after the Reconstruction era: control of the House of Representatives constantly changed hands between the Democrats and the Republicans with each election, making a consensus on any major issue nearly impossible.

The increase in voter turnout was also partly the result of machine party politics, which blossomed in large U.S. cities during the Gilded Age. Powerful political “bosses” in each party coerced urban residents into voting for favored candidates, who would then give kickbacks and bribes back to the bosses in appreciation for getting them elected. Bosses would also spend money to improve constituents’ neighborhoods to ensure a steady flow of votes for their machines. In this sense, party bosses and machine politics actually helped some of the poorest people in the cities. Many politicians elected during the Gilded Age were the product of machine party politics.

Driven by the North, which emerged from the Civil War an industrial powerhouse, the United States experienced a flurry of unprecedented growth and industrialization during the Gilded Age, with a continent full of seemingly unlimited natural resources and driven by millions of immigrants ready to work. In fact, some historians have referred to this era as America’s second Industrial Revolution, because it completely changed American society, politics, and the economy. Mechanization and marketing were the keys to success in this age: companies that could mass-produce products and convince people to buy them accumulated enormous amounts of wealth, while companies that could not were forced out of business by brutal competition.

Railroads were the linchpin in the new industrialized economy. The railroad industry enabled raw materials, finished products, food, and people to travel cross-country in a matter of days, as opposed to the months or years that it took just prior to the Civil War. By the end of the war, the United States boasted some 35,000 miles of track, mostly in the industrialized North. By the turn of the century, that number had jumped to almost 200 , 000 miles, linking the North, South, and West. With these railroads making travel easier, millions of rural Americans flocked to the cities, and by 1900 , nearly 40 percent of the population lived in urban areas.

By the twentieth century, the rise of big business and the large migration of Americans from the countryside to the cities caused a shift in political awareness, as elected officials saw the need to address the growing economic and social problems that developed along with the urban boom. So started the Progressive movement. Progressives believed that the government needed to take a strong, proactive role in the economy, regulating big business, immigration, and urban growth. These middle-class reformers hoped ultimately to regain control of the government from special interests like the railroads and trusts and pass effective legislation to protect consumers, organized labor, and minorities.

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Essay on The Progressive Presidents

The progressiveness of the U.S. presidential elections of 1912 was concluded in different philosophies of the two prime candidates, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom expressed Progressive ideas. Although both candidates, Wilson and Roosevelt, were Progressive, their attitudes regarding the promotion and implementation of the ideas of Progressivism in the United States were different, at least in their theoretic approaches. Reviewing the complex nature of Progressivism, it is possible to explore how presidents’ policies while in office may be different from their rhetoric on the campaign trail. Actually, the study of presidency helps to better understand the nature of political philosophy (Bowles, 2011). According to third-party Bull Mooses, Americans needed a new party that would help the nation to awaken and promote the sense of justice. The Progressive Party was aimed at the fulfillment of the duty to “maintain the government of the people, by the people and for the people” (Bull Moose Party, 1912). The Bull Moose Party was linked to Roosevelt’s political ideas. Wilson and Roosevelt expressed their ideas and priorities in their speeches: New Nationalism by Roosevelt and New Freedom by Wilson. The major goal of this paper is to compare each president’s political principles with his actions while in office and define how well their actions matched their rhetoric.

Comparing Theodore Roosevelt’s political principles with his actions while in office

Theodore Roosevelt’s political principles differed from his actions while in office. Roosevelt’s political principles were aimed at developing new nationalism through socialization of democracy. He highlighted the “need for government to regulate capitalism, and provide a square deal for all Americans” (Roosevelt, 1910). Roosevelt wanted to achieve equality of opportunity, destructing the established special privileges. He said, “The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows” (Roosevelt, 1910). He wanted to achieve practical equality of opportunity for all American citizens.

Roosevelt’s presidency had been focused on realization of the new form of democracy through combining Hamilton’s strong presidency and Jefferson’s egalitarian political thought.  In fact, Roosevelt was the first political leader who managed to identify national principle with reforms. He realized that American leader should not only represent the national interests, but also develop reforms to meet the needs of the nation. As a result, some of Roosevelt’s policies while in office were different from his rhetoric on the campaign trail. In general, Roosevelt became an initiator and promoter of many progressive reforms. He supported organized labor, the control and regulation of business by the government, the protection of consumer rights (Bowles, 2011).

Comparing Woodrow Wilson’s political principles with his actions while in office

Woodrow Wilson’s political principles differed from his actions while in office. Wilson Inaugural Address made in 1913 provides many important facts that reflect Wilson’s political thought. He said, “We have built up, moreover, a great system of government, which has stood through a long age as in many respects a model for those who seek to set liberty upon foundations that will endure against fortuitous change, against storm and accident” (Wilson, 1913). He wanted to improve commerce of the world based on the just principles of taxation. He planned to use the government as an instrument to promote national interests, improve banking system and industrial system. He proposed to reform political institutions, rejecting the ideas of traditional constitutionalism.

The presidency of Wilson demonstrated different outcomes. Wilson was progressive in his ideas and tried to make some changes in conditions in both the economic and political fields. He referred to historicism. Wilson acted as a reformer. He managed to lower tariffs, improve banking regulation, but failed to break up monopolies. Besides, he led the US into WWI (the Great War) in 1917, despite his peaceful intentions. He passed the Espionage Act and Sedition Act to suppress the opponents of war (Bowles, 2011).

            Thus, it is necessary to conclude that both presidents succeeded in the Progressive era due to their progressive political ideas. The success of Theodore Roosevelt in politics did not influence his political contest at presidential elections of 1912. Woodrow Wilson managed to win, having the highest electoral vote and the majority of the popular vote. Nevertheless, these progressive presidents have very much in common.  Both of them developed policies while in office that differed from their rhetoric on the campaign trail. Both political leaders addressed the problems caused by increased industrialization, urbanization and the growth of big businesses in their political rhetoric, but they used different approaches to solve the problem while in office. Roosevelt placed emphasis on the importance of increased efficiency brought on by big businesses, but highlighted the need to pass legislation against the abuse of power, while Wilson argued that all monopoly was unproductive and wanted to abolish it, promoting small businesses. Undoubtedly, both presidents contributed to the development of the US during the Progressive Era.

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The Progressive Era History Essay

Introduction, start of the progressive movement, the era of prohibition, works cited.

The Progressive era in the United States which lasted from 1890 to 1920 was known for two things, namely that it was a period of progressive social movement and change that sought to reform many aspects of the country such as the government and economy.

It was also known as the era of Prohibition where in their zeal to completely revolutionize all aspects of American society the Progressives, as they were known, actually caused a large percentage of the population to turn to illegal and downright criminal behavior. This divergent set of events came as a result of the various reform movements that Progressives both within and outside of the government were trying to achieve.

It must be noted that initially the Progressive movement began as a social movement within various local areas which slowly progressed towards the national level. It attempted to address issues such as poverty, racism and class warfare under the assumption that most of society’s problems could actually be “fixed” by initiating social and political reforms (Leonard, 207).

This involved providing a far reaching education system for all classes, a safe environment for communities and families through political and social reform and finally an efficient workplace where anyone who wished to work would be able to earn a decent living (Leonard, 210).

The Progressive movement actually had far reaching effects which can still be felt to this day such as setting into motion concepts related to corporate monitoring, allowing women and minorities to vote and finally combating public fears against the supposed evils of immigration. While such methods of attempted reform can be considered largely positive it was only when the Progressives attempted to tackle vices that led to the movement’s greatest mistake.

The era of Prohibition, which consisted of outlawing the sale and manufacturing of alcohol, was actually started by various religious groups who rode on the coattails of the Progressive movement stating the “social harm” that alcohol had on the general population. As a result, the ban on alcohol achieved success by 1917 resulting in a general ban on its sale and production.

Despite the ban on alcohol a significant percentage of the local population still demanded the product which as a result caused many of them to either illegally manufacture it themselves or resort to smuggling it into the U.S (Beshears, 198). Millions of dollars were spent on preventing alcohol from reaching U.S. borders which further encouraged people to smuggle even more into the country due to the high prices they commanded.

In fact the era of Prohibition actually caused more alcohol to be consumed as compared to when the ban was not in place (Beshears, 200). As a result of the overzealousness of the Progressives a large percentage of the American population could actually be consider criminals which is more or less a slap in the face for a movement that tried to establish social and political reform.

Based on the facts presented in this paper it can be said that the Progressive movement was both positive and negative. Positive in that it was able to establish sufficient social, economic and political reform ideas that are apparent even today but it can also be considered negative since as a result of its overzealousness in “reforming” society it actually caused a period in American history characterized by a large percentage of the population turning to illegal actions.

Beshears, Laura. “Honorable Style in Dishonorable Times American Gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s.” Journal of American Culture 33.3 (2010): 197-206. EBSCO. Web.

Leonard, Thomas C. “Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19.4 (2005): 207-224. EBSCO. Web.

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1. IvyPanda . "The Progressive Era History." April 23, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-progressive-era-history/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Progressive Era History." April 23, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-progressive-era-history/.

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Jim Crow and Progressivism

Written by: Glenda Gilmore, Yale University

By the end of this section, you will:.

• Compare the goals and effects of the Progressive reform movement

Suggested Sequencing

Use this Narrative before The Great Migration Narrative to have students explore how Jim Crow laws encouraged African Americans to migrate from the South.

African Americans had initially been hopeful during Reconstruction after the Civil War. The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery in the United States, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection under the law and the rights of citizens, and the Fifteenth Amendment granted black male suffrage. African Americans were elected to local, state, and even national offices, and Congress passed civil rights legislation. However, the hopes of Reconstruction were dashed by horrific waves of violence against African Americans, the economic struggles of sharecropping (which, in some ways, resembled the conditions of slavery), the denial of equal civil rights including voting rights, and enforced segregation of the races. At the turn of the century, the new progressive reform movement heralded many changes, but whether African Americans would benefit from progressivism remained to be seen.

In the summer of 1896, teacher and journalist Sarah Dudley Pettey brimmed with enthusiasm as she sat down to write a newspaper column entitled “The Up-To-Date Woman.” Pettey saw opportunities for women all around her, even though she came from a small southern town in North Carolina. “Because the woman of to-day is progressive, some would laugh, her to scorn; others would call her masculine; but it is not true she is only up-to-date,” Pettey argued. She thought women could meet any challenge: “The up-to-date woman claims the ability and only asks . . . for the opportunity of clearly demonstrating her merits. . . . she is qualified to legislate and arbitrate with statesmen.” Pettey believed nothing could stop women from moving forward “side by side” with men. The year 1895 heralded “the advent of the new woman.” She joined a growing national movement for women’s suffrage that blossomed in the Progressive Era of the next 20 years. That movement culminated in the 1920 ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, giving all women across America suffrage.

However, if progressivism at the turn of the twentieth century proved Pettey’s predictions about the up-to-date woman, it also ultimately excluded her from their ranks because she was a southern African American woman. In 1896, her faith in progress was absolute and included a bright future for black Americans. In fact, she linked womanhood and race to prove her point: “Some would say that woman is good in her place. This reminds me of what some white people say of the Negro; that ‘He is good in his place.'” African American progress since emancipation in 1865 progressed “onward and upward,” Pettey observed.

Sarah Dudley Pettey, pictured here in 1895, was part of the growing movement for women’s rights and suffrage.

Pettey’s confidence proved to be misplaced at the turn of the twentieth century as southern states began passing laws designed to exclude black voters. Although the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had enfranchised freedmen in 1869, southern whites now determined to take away their right to vote. The new state constitutional provisions and legislation seemed racially neutral on their face that is, they applied to all men eligible to vote but lawmakers designed and implemented them in ways that excluded black voters, sometimes along with poor whites. Mississippi had ratified a new constitution in 1890 mandating that by 1896, a voter must to “be able to read any section of the Constitution, or be able to understand the same . . . or give a reasonable interpretation thereof.” It also required a poll tax of $2.00, a considerable sum for poor farmers. Because the state constitution required every male Mississippian to re-register to vote, the white registrars who administered the literacy test failed even literate black voters.

Louisiana followed Mississippi and passed a disenfranchising law that included a literacy test, requiring the voter to write an application in the registrar’s presence. But it exempted from the test those who owned more than $300 in property or anyone who was the “son or grandson” of someone who could vote prior to January 1, 1867. Because the Fifteenth Amendment was passed in February 1869, this law excluded anyone who had previously been enslaved and his or her descendants. The “grandfather clause,” as it was called, blatantly empowered officials to violate the Fifteenth Amendment, but North Carolina followed Louisiana by enacting a similar constitutional amendment in 1902. By 1908, the entire South had passed laws that were used to disenfranchise black voters. The few African Americans who tried to vote often encountered armed whites who prevented them from doing so.

Disfranchising State Constitutions or Legislation: Southern states used a variety of tools to systematically disfranchise black southerners from 1890 through 1908.

Pettey’s hopes that black women would go on to win suffrage were obliterated in 1898 when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in Williams v. Mississippi that literacy tests as requirements for voting were constitutional. As a result, most blacks were effectively disenfranchised. It was not until 1915 that the Supreme Court found grandfather clauses, which skirted constitutional intentions, unconstitutional. By then, few African Americans were voting in the South. The federal government had abandoned the commitment it had made to them under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

Nor did law enforcement often challenge white violence against southern African Americans; in fact, law enforcement often perpetrated violence. By the time Pettey wrote in 1896, more than 840 African Americans had been lynched so far in the decade. Many lynchings resulted from business disputes or personal confrontations, but white southerners often claimed they lynched black men who had raped white women. There was no rape epidemic in the South, yet white politicians mounted a propaganda campaign to manipulate the fear of sexual violence as justification for lynchings. The federal government did not intervene, even in cases of white mob violence and murder against black communities.

Lynchings were not exclusive to the South. This image shows a crowd of spectators gathered to watch the lynching of Will James in Cairo, Illinois, on November 11, 1909. What does the size of the crowd reveal about this horrific event?

Moreover, southern officials began to legislate new segregation laws that required black people to ride in separate train cars, banned them from street cars, prohibited them from buying homes in white neighborhoods, and excluded them from certain hotels and restaurants and other private accommodations. They called this new system Jim Crow, named for a white minstrel who performed in blackface before the Civil War. A New Orleans resident named Homer Plessy, who was of one-eighth African heritage, challenged the constitutionality of the laws all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson . He expected to win, but the court ruled segregation legal in 1896, as long as it was “separate but equal.” Accommodations for African Americans were rarely equal, and strict segregation began.

By 1920, public accommodations in the South were segregated, from drinking fountains, waiting rooms, and restrooms to hospitals, schools, and courtrooms.

Several factors accounted for the federal government’s retreat from Reconstruction. A new generation, brought up on tales of the excesses of “Radical” Reconstruction, now held political power. With the Civil War a distant memory, African Americans found few friends in Washington. White northerners and Midwesterners had tired of the “race question” in politics. And many northern whites were sympathetic to southern views on race because they faced the influx of millions of Eastern European immigrants who were seen as racially inferior and in competition for jobs.

But the most important factor was that many whites in the North and South saw literacy requirements for voting as “progressive,” and southern white politicians cast disenfranchisement as good government reform because they argued that keeping African Americans segregated promoted a greater social order and unity, for whites. Some northern whites agreed, but only in the South did the Progressive Era’s emphasis on an educated electorate work as a ploy to prevent an entire group of people from voting.

Many scholars and members of the general public embraced the idea of social Darwinism, a cultural theory derived from Charles Darwin’s work on biological evolution. All people, they believed, were evolving, but white people, and particularly those of northern European background, were superior. Not all progressives were social Darwinists, but many distinguished academics and politicians espoused this view. Woodrow Wilson, who became president in 1912 and segregated the federal workforce, believed people of northern European descent had inherited a special gift for governance called the Teutonic Germ. African Americans were also subject to forced sterilization programs with the rise of eugenics, a program of forced sterilizations targeted at stopping blacks from reproducing.

Thus, the nation looked away as the South instituted legal discrimination based on race. The explosion of knowledge that made people believe society was rapidly evolving toward the perfection of what Sarah Pettey called “modern civilization” produced a distorted version of progressivism in the South that counted African Americans out of the polity. Many began leaving the South. Pettey’s friend and neighbor, black member of Congress George White, protested, “I can no longer live in North Carolina and be treated as a man.” He did not stand for reelection and founded a settlement in New Jersey. Between 1900 and 1910, more than 27,825 black North Carolinians moved north, and nearly 30,000 followed in the Great Migration over the next decade. Segregation and disenfranchisement stood until the civil rights movement won federal victories in the 1950s and 1960s.

Review Questions

1. Southern states disenfranchised black male voters using all the following methods except

• literacy tests
• grandfather clauses
• enumerated powers

2. Reasons for the retreat from the goals of Reconstruction during the late nineteenth century included

• achievement of political equality for freedmen with the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments
• loss of national interest in the “race question” as the industrial revolution took hold
• greater national diversity as millions of African Americans left the South for northern cities
• Homer Plessy’s successful challenge to segregation in the U.S. Supreme Court

3. The primary purpose of Jim Crow legislation was to

• legalize racial segregation
• guarantee the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
• reduce mob violence and the number of lynchings in the South
• provide separate but equal accommodations

4. The U.S. Supreme Court’s majority decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case (1896) immediately resulted in

• the legality of literacy tests
• an increase in school desegregation
• enforcement of the equal protection clause
• expansion of Jim Crow legislation

5. In the South, the progressive agenda included

• passage of color-blind legislation
• support for universal women’s suffrage
• disenfranchisement of black men
• overwhelming support for Republican candidates

6. The state of race relations in the South between 1890 and World War I was one of the reasons for

• the Great Migration of African Americans to northern cities
• entry of the United States into World War I
• increase in African American voter registration in rural southern counties
• loss of public support for social Darwinism

7. Which of the following best compares northern and southern views of literacy requirements for voting?

• Northern whites generally viewed literacy tests as a challenge to the 15th Amendment.
• Southern whites saw literacy requirements as a challenge to progressive reforms.
• Southern whites used literacy requirements as justification to keep immigrants from voting.
• Many Northern whites were sympathetic to the underlying assumptions of race at the basis of literacy requirements.

Free Response Questions

• Explain how southern states countered the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
• Explain how the U.S. Supreme Court facilitated the spread of racial segregation at the turn of the twentieth century.

AP Practice Questions

“But in the view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution in color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. . . . The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.”

Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 U.S. 537 (1896) Justice John Marshall Harlan dissenting

1. Which of the following contradicted the sentiments in the excerpt?

• Passage of Jim Crow legislation
• Conscription of African Americans in World War I
• Progressivism and its emphasis on efficiency
• The dissent in the Slaughterhouse Cases

2. What was a direct result of the majority decision in the case mentioned in the excerpt?

• Expansion of state segregation laws
• Passage of a congressional civil rights law banning segregation
• An end to sharecropping
• Beginning of the Red Scare

3. This excerpt was written in response to

• anti-imperialism
• challenges to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution
• increased immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
• the African American Great Migration to northern cities

Primary Sources

“(1898) The Louisiana grandfather clause.” BlackPast . http://www.blackpast.org/primary/1898-louisiana-grandfather-clause

“Lynchings by Year and Race.” http://famous-trials.com/legacyftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html

Pettey, Sarah Dudley. “The Up-To-Date Woman.” The Star of Zion , August 13, 1896, p. 2.

Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson. http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/nclc375/harlan.html

“The Mississippi Constitution of 1890 as originally adopted.” Mississippi History Now . http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/103/index.php?s=extra&id=270

White, George H. Defense of the Negro Race: Charges Answered . Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1901.

Suggested Resources

Blume, Ralph R. “Constitutional Law “Use of Literary Tests to Restrict the Right to Vote.” Notre Dame Law Review 31 no. 2 (1956):251-264.

Feimster, Crystal N. Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Gilmore, Glenda E. Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Hoffer, William James Hull. Plessy v. Ferguson: Race and Inequality in Jim Crow America . Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2012.

Link, William A. The Paradox of Southern Progressivism . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Painter, Nell Irvin, Standing at Armageddon: A Grassroots History of the Progressive Era . New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.

Perman, Michael. Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908 . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Williamson, Joel. The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the South Since Emancipation . New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In our resource history is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment.

African Americans in the Progressive Era

Fight for Recognition of African American Concerns in Era of Rapid Change

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• Segregation and Jim Crow
• The Black Freedom Struggle
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• Important Figures
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• American History
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The Progressive Movement

African american reformers of the progressive era, organizations.

• Women's Suffrage
• African American Newspapers

Effects of African American Initiatives During the Progressive Era

Resources and further reading.

• M.S.Ed, Secondary Education, St. John's University
• M.F.A., Creative Writing, City College of New York
• B.A., English, City College of New York

The Progressive Era spanned the years from 1890–1920 when the United States was experiencing rapid growth. Immigrants from eastern and southern Europe arrived in droves. Cities were overcrowded, and those living in poverty suffered greatly. Politicians in the major cities controlled their power through various political machines. Companies were creating monopolies and controlling many of the nation’s finances.

A concern emerged from many Americans who believed that great change was needed in society to protect everyday people. As a result, the concept of reform took place in society. Reformers such as social workers, journalists, educators, and even politicians emerged to change society. This was known as the Progressive Movement .

One issue was consistently ignored: the plight of African Americans in the United States. African Americans were faced with consistent racism in the form of segregation in public spaces and disenfranchisement from the political process. Access to quality healthcare, education, and housing was scarce, and lynchings were rampant in the South.

To counter these injustices, African American reformists also emerged to expose and then fight for equal rights in the United States.

• Booker T. Washington was an educator who established the Tuskegee Institute. Washington argued that African Americans should learn trades that would offer them the opportunity to be progressive citizens. Instead of fighting against discrimination, Washington argued that African Americans should use their education and knowledge to become self-sufficient in American society and not in competition with white Americans.
• W.E.B Du Bois was the founder of the Niagara Movement and later the NAACP, Du Bois disagreed with Washington. He argued that African Americans should consistently fight for racial equality.
• Ida B. Wells  was   a journalist who wrote about the horrors of lynching in the South. Wells' work made her a muckraker, one of several White and Black journalists who wrote news stories about social, political, and economic conditions that led to changes. Wells' reporting led to the development of the Anti-Lynching Campaign.
• National Association of Colored Women was established in 1896 by a group of middle-class African American women. The goal of the NACW was to develop the economic, moral, religious, and social welfare of women and children. The NACW also worked to end social and racial inequality.
• Niagara Movement was developed   in 1905 by William Monroe Trotter and W. E. B. Du Bois. Trotter and DuBois' mission was to develop an aggressive way of fighting racial inequality.
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was an outgrowth of the Niagara Movement and was established in 1909. Since then the organization has been essential to fighting social and racial inequality through legislation, court cases, and protests.
• National Urban League  was established in 1910, this organization's mission was to end racial discrimination and provide economic empowerment to African Americans who migrated from southern rural areas to northern cities through the Great Migration.

Women's Suffrage

One of the major initiatives of the Progressive Era was the women's suffrage movement. However, many organizations that were established to fight for the voting rights of women either marginalized or ignored African American women.

As a result, African American women such as Mary Church Terrell became dedicated to organizing women on the local and national level to fight for equal rights in society. The work of white suffrage organizations along with African American women's organizations ultimately led to the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, which granted women the right to vote.

African American Newspapers

While mainstream newspapers during the Progressive Era focused on the horrors of urban blight and political corruption, lynching and the effects of Jim Crow laws were largely ignored.

African Americans began publishing daily and weekly newspapers such as the "Chicago Defender," "Amsterdam News,"​ and the "Pittsburgh Courier" to expose the local and national injustices of African Americans. Known as the Black Press, journalists such as William Monroe Trotter, James Weldon Johnson, and Ida B. Wells all wrote about lynching and segregation as well as the importance of becoming socially and politically active.

Monthly publications such as "The Crisis," the official magazine of the NAACP and Opportunity, published by the National Urban League became necessary to spread the news about the positive achievements of African Americans as well.

Although the African American fight to end discrimination did not lead to immediate changes in legislation, several changes did take place that impacted African Americans. Organizations such as the Niagara Movement, NACW, NAACP, NUL all resulted in building stronger African American communities by providing healthcare, housing, and educational services.

The reporting of lynching and other acts of terror in African American newspapers ultimately led to mainstream newspapers publishing articles and editorials on this issue, making it a national initiative. Lastly, the work of Washington, Du Bois, Wells, Terrell, and countless others ultimately led to the protests of the Civil Rights Movement sixty years later.

• Diner, Steven J. "A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era." New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.
• Frankel, Noralee and Nancy S. Dye (eds.) "Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era." Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1991.
• Franklin, Jimmie. " Blacks and the Progressive Movement: Emergence of a New Synthesis ." OAH Magazine of History 13.3 (1999): 20–23. Print.
• McGerr, Michael E. "A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920." Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Stovall, Mary E. " The 'Chicago Defender' in the Progressive Era ." Illinois Historical Journal 83.3 (1990): 159–72. Print.
• Stromqvist, Sheldon. "Reinventing 'The People': The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism." Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005.
• African-American Organizations of the Progressive Era
• African-American Men and Women of the Progressive Era
• What Led to the Formation of the NAACP?
• The Jim Crow Era
• The Niagara Movement: Organizing for Social Change
• Who Popularized the term 'Talented Tenth'?
• Biography of W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Activist and Scholar
• Bishop Alexander Walters: Religious Leader and Civil Rights Activist
• The Early History of the NAACP: A Timeline
• The African American Press Timeline: 1827 to 1895
• Black History Timeline: 1900–1909
• Biography of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Journalist Who Fought Racism
• Black History and Women's Timeline: 1900–1919
• Understanding the Progressive Era
• Black History Timeline: 1910–1919
• The 'Big Six' Organizers of the Civil Rights Movement

Progressive Presidents During The Progressive Era

Show More All of the progressive presidents were essential during the Progressive era, however, I believe President Taft to have had the greatest effect on conditions for American people. First, President Taft was able to declare an 8-hour workday for government employees, which many had been long anticipating. Also, like Roosevelt, Taft was a “trustbuster”, who lessened the power of major corporations and expanded the governments power and helped the American people by creating competition again. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft was a much stronger trustbuster bringing more cases in his four years compared to Roosevelt’s seven. Lastly, Taft was able to assure the 16th Amendment ratification, which allowed Congress to collect an income tax from the rich or large

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NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism

David Folkenflik

NPR suspended senior editor Uri Berliner for five days without pay after he wrote an essay accusing the network of losing the public's trust and appeared on a podcast to explain his argument. Uri Berliner hide caption

NPR suspended senior editor Uri Berliner for five days without pay after he wrote an essay accusing the network of losing the public's trust and appeared on a podcast to explain his argument.

NPR has formally punished Uri Berliner, the senior editor who publicly argued a week ago that the network had "lost America's trust" by approaching news stories with a rigidly progressive mindset.

Berliner's five-day suspension without pay, which began last Friday, has not been previously reported.

Yet the public radio network is grappling in other ways with the fallout from Berliner's essay for the online news site The Free Press . It angered many of his colleagues, led NPR leaders to announce monthly internal reviews of the network's coverage, and gave fresh ammunition to conservative and partisan Republican critics of NPR, including former President Donald Trump.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo is among those now targeting NPR's new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the network. Among others, those posts include a 2020 tweet that called Trump racist and another that appeared to minimize rioting during social justice protests that year. Maher took the job at NPR last month — her first at a news organization .

In a statement Monday about the messages she had posted, Maher praised the integrity of NPR's journalists and underscored the independence of their reporting.

"In America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen," she said. "What matters is NPR's work and my commitment as its CEO: public service, editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public. NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests."

The network noted that "the CEO is not involved in editorial decisions."

In an interview with me later on Monday, Berliner said the social media posts demonstrated Maher was all but incapable of being the person best poised to direct the organization.

"We're looking for a leader right now who's going to be unifying and bring more people into the tent and have a broader perspective on, sort of, what America is all about," Berliner said. "And this seems to be the opposite of that."

Conservative critics of NPR are now targeting its new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the public radio network last month. Stephen Voss/Stephen Voss hide caption

Conservative critics of NPR are now targeting its new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the public radio network last month.

He said that he tried repeatedly to make his concerns over NPR's coverage known to news leaders and to Maher's predecessor as chief executive before publishing his essay.

Berliner has singled out coverage of several issues dominating the 2020s for criticism, including trans rights, the Israel-Hamas war and COVID. Berliner says he sees the same problems at other news organizations, but argues NPR, as a mission-driven institution, has a greater obligation to fairness.

"I love NPR and feel it's a national trust," Berliner says. "We have great journalists here. If they shed their opinions and did the great journalism they're capable of, this would be a much more interesting and fulfilling organization for our listeners."

A "final warning"

The circumstances surrounding the interview were singular.

Berliner provided me with a copy of the formal rebuke to review. NPR did not confirm or comment upon his suspension for this article.

In presenting Berliner's suspension Thursday afternoon, the organization told the editor he had failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets, as is required of NPR journalists. It called the letter a "final warning," saying Berliner would be fired if he violated NPR's policy again. Berliner is a dues-paying member of NPR's newsroom union but says he is not appealing the punishment.

The Free Press is a site that has become a haven for journalists who believe that mainstream media outlets have become too liberal. In addition to his essay, Berliner appeared in an episode of its podcast Honestly with Bari Weiss.

A few hours after the essay appeared online, NPR chief business editor Pallavi Gogoi reminded Berliner of the requirement that he secure approval before appearing in outside press, according to a copy of the note provided by Berliner.

In its formal rebuke, NPR did not cite Berliner's appearance on Chris Cuomo's NewsNation program last Tuesday night, for which NPR gave him the green light. (NPR's chief communications officer told Berliner to focus on his own experience and not share proprietary information.) The NPR letter also did not cite his remarks to The New York Times , which ran its article mid-afternoon Thursday, shortly before the reprimand was sent. Berliner says he did not seek approval before talking with the Times .

NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust

Berliner says he did not get permission from NPR to speak with me for this story but that he was not worried about the consequences: "Talking to an NPR journalist and being fired for that would be extraordinary, I think."

Berliner is a member of NPR's business desk, as am I, and he has helped to edit many of my stories. He had no involvement in the preparation of this article and did not see it before it was posted publicly.

In rebuking Berliner, NPR said he had also publicly released proprietary information about audience demographics, which it considers confidential. He said those figures "were essentially marketing material. If they had been really good, they probably would have distributed them and sent them out to the world."

Feelings of anger and betrayal inside the newsroom

His essay and subsequent public remarks stirred deep anger and dismay within NPR. Colleagues contend Berliner cherry-picked examples to fit his arguments and challenge the accuracy of his accounts. They also note he did not seek comment from the journalists involved in the work he cited.

Morning Edition host Michel Martin told me some colleagues at the network share Berliner's concerns that coverage is frequently presented through an ideological or idealistic prism that can alienate listeners.

"The way to address that is through training and mentorship," says Martin, herself a veteran of nearly two decades at the network who has also reported for The Wall Street Journal and ABC News. "It's not by blowing the place up, by trashing your colleagues, in full view of people who don't really care about it anyway."

Several NPR journalists told me they are no longer willing to work with Berliner as they no longer have confidence that he will keep private their internal musings about stories as they work through coverage.

"Newsrooms run on trust," NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben tweeted last week, without mentioning Berliner by name. "If you violate everyone's trust by going to another outlet and sh--ing on your colleagues (while doing a bad job journalistically, for that matter), I don't know how you do your job now."

Berliner rejected that critique, saying nothing in his essay or subsequent remarks betrayed private observations or arguments about coverage.

Other newsrooms are also grappling with questions over news judgment and confidentiality. On Monday, New York Times Executive Editor Joseph Kahn announced to his staff that the newspaper's inquiry into who leaked internal dissent over a planned episode of its podcast The Daily to another news outlet proved inconclusive. The episode was to focus on a December report on the use of sexual assault as part of the Hamas attack on Israel in October. Audio staffers aired doubts over how well the reporting stood up to scrutiny.

"We work together with trust and collegiality everyday on everything we produce, and I have every expectation that this incident will prove to be a singular exception to an important rule," Kahn wrote to Times staffers.

At NPR, some of Berliner's colleagues have weighed in online against his claim that the network has focused on diversifying its workforce without a concomitant commitment to diversity of viewpoint. Recently retired Chief Executive John Lansing has referred to this pursuit of diversity within NPR's workforce as its " North Star ," a moral imperative and chief business strategy.

In his essay, Berliner tagged the strategy as a failure, citing the drop in NPR's broadcast audiences and its struggle to attract more Black and Latino listeners in particular.

"During most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding," Berliner writes. "In recent years, however, that has changed."

Berliner writes, "For NPR, which purports to consider all things, it's devastating both for its journalism and its business model."

NPR investigative reporter Chiara Eisner wrote in a comment for this story: "Minorities do not all think the same and do not report the same. Good reporters and editors should know that by now. It's embarrassing to me as a reporter at NPR that a senior editor here missed that point in 2024."

Some colleagues drafted a letter to Maher and NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, seeking greater clarity on NPR's standards for its coverage and the behavior of its journalists — clearly pointed at Berliner.

A plan for "healthy discussion"

On Friday, CEO Maher stood up for the network's mission and the journalism, taking issue with Berliner's critique, though never mentioning him by name. Among her chief issues, she said Berliner's essay offered "a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are."

Berliner took great exception to that, saying she had denigrated him. He said that he supported diversifying NPR's workforce to look more like the U.S. population at large. She did not address that in a subsequent private exchange he shared with me for this story. (An NPR spokesperson declined further comment.)

Late Monday afternoon, Chapin announced to the newsroom that Executive Editor Eva Rodriguez would lead monthly meetings to review coverage.

"Among the questions we'll ask of ourselves each month: Did we capture the diversity of this country — racial, ethnic, religious, economic, political geographic, etc — in all of its complexity and in a way that helped listeners and readers recognize themselves and their communities?" Chapin wrote in the memo. "Did we offer coverage that helped them understand — even if just a bit better — those neighbors with whom they share little in common?"

Berliner said he welcomed the announcement but would withhold judgment until those meetings played out.

In a text for this story, Chapin said such sessions had been discussed since Lansing unified the news and programming divisions under her acting leadership last year.

"Now seemed [the] time to deliver if we were going to do it," Chapin said. "Healthy discussion is something we need more of."

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

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